By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service

Will maturing asphalt change the racing at Iowa Speedway?

NEWTON, Iowa—The new pavement at Iowa Speedway has aged for only a year, but NASCAR Cup Series drivers can expect a different track when they line up for Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol (3:30 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Strips of new asphalt in the corners provided more grip in last year’s race, won by Ryan Blaney. But with a year of weathering, Blaney expects the advantage of the “grip strips” to have dissipated to some degree.

“The asphalt definitely looks a lot lighter than last year, like it’s taken some wear,” Blaney said. “And in the Xfinity practice (on Saturday), it was nice. They were in the second groove immediately. So I think it’s going to be pretty racy.

“Honestly, this race track was pretty racy last year when the second lane came in. It kind of had two-and-a-half, three lanes, really, at the end of the day. I’m curious to see what the tire does.

“Talking to some Xfinity guys after practice, they thought it was a little less grip than what it was last year, and I think that’s just going to get worse and worse as the weekend goes on and rubber gets laid down, and the track continues to lose a little grip.”

Brenden “Butterbean” Queen, winner of Friday’s ARCA Menards Series race at Iowa, can attest to some of Blaney’s suppositions. Queen picked the outside lane for restarts at the 0.875 short track, expecting to find more grip in the repaved strips.

“It makes it really fun to drive, ‘cause we like to be able to slip around and have to manage it,” Queen said. “The thing that caught me off guard was I thought the top was going to be so dominant on a restart, and it was, if you could maintain into Turn 1.

“The problem was, that long patch to the restart line I though was going to be extra grip, but it was kind of like a sandy dust, and I had a ton of wheel-spin issues, and even worse when I transitioned to the old pavement versus that patch.”

Violent crash in practice sends Kyle Busch to back of field

Kyle Busch had just posted the second fastest lap in Group A in Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice at Iowa Speedway when calamity struck.

On his 18th circuit of the session, Busch drove hard into Turn 1, but his No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet lurched out of control and slammed nose-first into the outside wall.

With the car destroyed, Busch will start Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 from the rear of the field in a backup car.

Busch said he was trying to build more security into the rear of the car.

“Anywhere I would push it a little harder, I would feel rear chatter,” Busch said. “I felt really good about the changes that we made there, came out of Turn 4 really hot and heavy and hard on it and went off into Turn 1 with too much trust and chattered the right rear and wrecked it.

“I’m not real sure how to find more trust when you feel something good in one corner, and it’s not there in the next.”

In danger of missing the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for the second straight year, Busch almost certainly must win one of the next four races to qualify for the postseason. He’s 81 points below the current elimination line.

Bubba Wallace curtails celebration despite monumental victory

Thanks to “advancing years” and a young child, Bubba Wallace has learned that wild victory celebrations come with a price.

Even though the driver of the No. 23 Toyota won the biggest race of his life last Sunday, the festivities after the Brickyard 400 were relatively subdued.

“Man, I’ll tell you, I did not go hard after the win,” said the 31-year-old Wallace. “Getting older and realizing that hangovers suck, and also having a kid (10-month-old Becks) who doesn’t care if you’re hung over, that made me stop after two beers, and I just enjoyed the time.

“I had the team over, everybody got to celebrate together, and it was a fun night. The celebration continued on, obviously. You go to the shop and see everybody there. Just really, really cool to get the Brickyard 400, their first Crown Jewel.

“Celebrated Tuesday with the team, all while working—you know work never stops. Then just got to relax with the family the rest of the week.”

Wallace had another good reason to relax. His victory at Indy almost certainly earned a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs—the first time the 23XI Racing driver has scored a victory in the regular season.

Kyle Larson very much in the hunt for regular-season championship

Three Hendrick Motorsports drivers are 1-2-3 in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with four races left in the regular season—the closest competition for the 15-Playoff-point bonus that goes to the regular-season winner since the current system was installed in 2017.

Chase Elliott has a four-point lead over teammate William Byron in second, with Kyle Larson 15 points back in third.

Byron finished second in last year’s Iowa race, and Elliott ran third, but Larson, despite his 34th-place finish, arguably had the fastest car in the field.

Larson won the pole for the inaugural Cup race at the 0.875-mile track and scored a stage win before contact from Daniel Suarez’s Chevrolet spun Larson’s No. 5 Camaro into the outside wall and ruined his race.

“I feel like our team was really, really strong to start the year (this season),” Larson said. “We had those five or six weeks where we had fallen off a bit, but these last two have gone well. We were competitive here at Iowa last year…”

In all probability, the teammates will battle for the regular-season title until the final regular-season race at Daytona. If there’s a spoiler, it’s likely to be Denny Hamlin, who trails Elliott by 20 points despite missing a race for the birth of his son.

“It’s great to see Hendrick Motorsports atop the standings right now—at least three of us are—with just a few races left till the end of the regular season,” Larson said. “That’s something to be proud of, but there’s still a lot of racing left, and the Playoffs can be crazy.”