Denny Hamlin: 'I have no idea' what to expect at Iowa after repave

The highly anticipated NASCAR Cup Series debut at Iowa Speedway takes place this Sunday with the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol.

The racetrack underwent a partial repave in preparation for the event, with the entrances and exits of turns two and four getting a fresh coat of asphalt. Photos of the newly paved surface emerged last month, showing just a sliver of the old pavement remaining in the corners of the track. NASCAR announced this past October that a repave would occur, leaving them a narrow window to get it done in time with three months of the winter halting all progress.

NASCAR repaved what it could before conducting a tire test and as a result, Iowa Speedway looks unique to say the least. Denny Hamlin said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast that it “does not look great.”

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“It does not look great,” Hamlin said. “It’s one lane on the bottom and then it’s a partial lane up top. So, you’re telling me that you ran out of time because over the course of a day that it would have taken you to move the top lane paving from the beginning of the corner to the end, you didn’t have time for that? I don’t know. It shows where NASCAR is a little different. We don’t have standards when it comes to facilities. We have standards but they’re very, very loose. And they’re not — we don’t have surface standards or anything like that and I don’t buy the fact that we ran out of time and it’s too cold. Like, they literally just patched this thing up.

“I just praised NASCAR and their paving jobs a month or two ago, and then this. It’s not ideal for sure. We wished we could have raced on the old Iowa. But evidently it was tore up pretty bad and if it did rain, it was gonna be really bad. I understand why NASCAR has to pave tracks and that’s understandable. But not leaving two at least full lanes worth of paving is a head scratcher.”

Denny Hamlin has some concerns about Iowa Speedway

Hamlin added he has “no idea” how the race will go and expressed concerns with how difficult it will be to pass.

“I have no idea,” Hamlin said. “It sounds like the groove was very narrow. It was very fast and passing will be extremely difficult because you can’t go anywhere else on the racetrack. The tires are very hard, so we’re not gonna run any type of soft tire at that track. There wasn’t enough time to test a different tire or get it manufactured. So, seems like we’re not allowing enough time for things to happen.”