{"id":127704,"date":"2025-08-08T00:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/127704\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T00:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:37:11","slug":"nascars-mike-forde-addresses-2026-return-to-iowa-potential-repave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/127704\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR’s Mike Forde addresses 2026 return to Iowa, potential repave"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Forde<\/strong>, NASCAR\u2019s managing director of racing communications, is not sure if the governing body will return to Iowa Speedway for the 2026 season. On the Hauler Talk podcast,<\/a> Forde was asked about the future of the track and a potential repave.<\/p>\n

\u201cTBD. As far as what we\u2019re looking at for next year\u2019s schedule, I think we\u2019re probably three weeks away on when that schedule would drop,\u201d Forde said. \u201cHaven\u2019t heard anything one way or the other on Iowa except all positives. I don\u2019t have any inside information. If I did, I wouldn\u2019t be able to talk about it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forde then talked about the fans who attended the race at Iowa. \u201cThey come out, and they show their love for Iowa, and they\u2019re voting with their wallet on whether it should be on the schedule,\u201d he said. \u201cI imagine the powers that be will take that into account. <\/p>\n

William Byron talks about Iowa Speedway after winning NASCAR Cup Series race<\/p>\n

\u201cThen the next step would be on a repave. We would get with the industry on that as well and get their opinion. Some like the old surface, or whenever there is an old surface that has this question of do we need a repave or not. Some want to keep it because that does lead to some good racing, but there are parts of that track that are kind of put together. There\u2019s some band-aids on that track that probably need to be the more permanent solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NASCAR Cup Series began competing at Iowa last year, and Ryan Blaney<\/strong> won the inaugural race. On Sunday, William Byron <\/strong>won the Iowa Corn 350<\/a>, and it was his second victory of the season. After the race, Byron was asked what he expects from Iowa Speedway going forward. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just kind of roll with it,\u201d Byron said. \u201cBut I think they should probably see it through now. The track is starting to age pretty quickly. It would probably be good if you repaved the top now, at least repave the straightaways. I\u2019m not sure. It\u2019s kind of like our strategy today; once you\u2019ve committed to it, you\u2019ve just got to see it through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iowa Speedway opened in 2006 and is 0.875 miles long. NASCAR has owned the track since 2013 and has hosted Xfinity Series races there since 2011. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Forde, NASCAR\u2019s managing director of racing communications, is not sure if the governing body will return to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":127705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-127704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114990353318673061","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}