Denny Hamlin says Iowa track repave 'does not look great'

Iowa Speedway underwent a partial repave over the last several months just in time to host its first ever NASCAR Cup Series race, the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol, which takes place this Sunday.

Among the notable changes, the entrances and exits of turns two and four getting a fresh coat of asphalt. 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 incomplete.

If you were to ask Denny Hamlin, it straight up “does not look great,” he said this week on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast.

Denny Hamlin left scratching his head at Iowa Speedway repave

“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: ‘I have no idea’ what to expect at Iowa after repave

Hamlin has certainly had his issues with repaves at tracks across the circuit, notably getting into an X spat with Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith earlier this year. His tune changed of late, as he complimented the job done repaving North Wilkesboro and Sonoma.

NASCAR owns Iowa Speedway, not Speedway Motorsports. And from what he’s seen thus far, he’s far from impressed.

“I have no idea,” Hamlin said when asked what he expects at Iowa. “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.”