The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Iowa on Sunday, the circuit’s fourth-shortest track. NASCAR has already visited the two shortest tracks: Martinsville Speedway (where Denny Hamlin won the Cook Out 400) and Bristol Motor Speedway (where Kyle Larson won the Food City 500).

During Larson’s press conference ahead of Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol, Larson was informed that the polesitter to win a Cup Series short track race was Hamlin in 2019 at Bristol. 

“Damn,” he reacted (per Jeff Gluck of The Athletic). That’s even the old car. That’s wild.” Larson, fresh off a second-place finish in Indianapolis, finished third behind Chase Briscoe and William Byron for the pole at Iowa. 

The Iowa Speedway (.875 miles) ranked only behind the Martinsville Speedway (0.526 miles), the Bristol Motor Speedway (0.533 miles), and the Richmond Raceway (0.75 miles) for the title of shortest NASCAR 2025 Cup Series Track. 

Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Venue & Racing Innovations Officer, hinted that short tracks may be coming to the playoffs. 

“Never say never, but I think we’ve unanimously agreed that (championship weekend) needs to look and feel like what we would expect traditional NASCAR racing to look and feel like….Short tracks, intermediate tracks, (one-) mile tracks are all on the board,” he admitted earlier this year. 

Don’t tell Briscoe, the Iowa pole winner, the surprising stat. He thanks his team for helping him earn his second consecutive pole. 

“I just feel that [crew chief] James [Small] and the engineers on the No.19 crew have done a really, really good job, especially these last two months, of understanding what I want and what I need out of the race car,” Briscoe said.

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“I’ve even kind of noticed a switch with James over the course of the last two or three weeks even, where it went from ‘We’ve got to be doing this different’ to ‘We’ve got to get the car better for you now.”

“I think that came as they started to understand me more, and our performance has been better. James does such a great job of understanding what I need, especially on Saturdays for qualifying.”