No passing is track’s only blemish

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By Nate Bloomquist | Monday, June 25, 2007 4:39 PM CDT | () comments

NEWTON, Iowa — Ashley Judd, for one, is a fan of Iowa Speedway.

“It’s such a soap opera, there’s so much drama!” she shouted over the cars to a friend. And shouted, “It’s so exciting, I just can’t take it,” she screamed and stomped later in the race.

Judd would know. As wife of Sunday’s Iowa Corn Indy 250 winner, Dario Franchitti, she has seen plenty of races.

For obvious reasons, she also knows a thing or two about drama. The actress twice has been nominated for a Golden Globe and has a screen presence like few others.

Wearing a green sundress, a necklace with an Africa-shaped charm, big sunglasses, strappy, open-toed shoes and a large tan hat, Judd paced through Franchitti’s pit. She hunkered down on top of a cooler at the back of the pit at one point, likely to control her nerves. All the same, she kept up morale among the crew members, slapping them on the back after pit stops and passing out atta-boys.

Judd likely gave the team a boost, and the crew did more than its share to lift Franchitti to Victory Lane. A speedy pit stop for fuel on lap 214 kept him in front of teammate Marco Andretti, who finished second.

Judd seemed to enjoy the race, although few know that for sure. She doesn’t give interviews at races. She likely doesn’t want to steal the spotlight from her husband. Franchitti no doubt enjoyed the race, too. But what did the fans think?

Well, there were a lot of them. Track officials said there was more than 35,000 in attendance. Not bad for a place that holds only 25,000 in permanent grandstand seating.

But for this race to be a success year after year, the IndyCars are going to have to make adjustments. Drivers had nothing but praise for the track, even the ones whose day ended in one of the many wrecks. By lap 110, almost half the field was out of the race. After all the carnage, seven of the top 10 drivers in the points standings failed to finish.

Even the fans who didn’t come to root only for Danica Patrick, who was out by lap 99, can’t like that.

Because of the high-downforce, short-track wings the IndyCar Series brought to the track, it was almost impossible to pass anywhere but the inside groove. None of the drivers was going to budge from that line once they stuck to it.

If the IndyCar Series can bring a middle set of specifications next year to the track that drives too fast to feel like a short track and is too short to be considered a superspeedway, the results might change.

“In my opinion, we need to sit down and talk about it,” Franchitti said. “I’m sure (IndyCar president) Brian Barnhart and the IndyCar Series guys are going to make some changes to the specification of the car we bring back here next year.”

The race had one pass for the lead, and it came from Franchitti who passed Buddy Rice, in a car that was significantly slower than the pace most of the day. No passes for the race lead isn’t fan friendly. Almost no passes anywhere isn’t a race. It’s a high-speed parade.

The only other way to pass came in the pit lane or on restarts. Put a bunch of desperate drivers on a wide track with multiple grooves inches apart from each other on a restart, and it doesn’t take a ethanol scientist to figure out what’s going to happen.

Iowa Speedway created plenty of drama, more than most on the series schedule, and the IndyCars possibly gave the track its most excitement so far. Track designer Rusty Wallace can take credit for that.

But give the IndyCar Series a best race nomination, not the award.

Nate Bloomquist can be contacted at (563) 383-2201 or nbloomquist@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.