Winners and Losers: Iowa 275 weekend

Morgan Holiday
Jul 16
5 min read

Written by Morgan Holiday

The double-header weekend at Iowa Speedway saw two different IndyCar race winners: Pato O’Ward and (predictably) Álex Palou.

With two races on the docket instead of the typical one, there was plenty of action with too many storylines to follow them all at once. DIVEBOMB takes a look at the biggest winners and losers from both races.

Winner - Marcus Armstrong

Meyer Shank Racing’s Armstrong has quietly been having his best IndyCar season to date. Now on 267 points and sitting seventh in the standings, he’s only 31 points off his previous best points total with five races still to go in the season.

Armstrong came into Iowa with a streak of four straight top 10 finishes–which he was able to get up to six by the end of the weekend.

He qualified 11th for Race 1 and finished ninth. He qualified 12th for Race 2 and was able to improve all the way up to third, just missing out on a second place finish to fellow New Zealander Scott Dixon.

Race 2 marked Armstrong’s second career IndyCar podium, and his first one on an oval track. For drivers coming from a non-American racing background, ovals often prove to be the biggest challenge, but Armstrong’s Iowa weekend was a strong showing of improvement. After all, it’s only his second season racing on ovals.

Two top 10 finishes for Armstrong caps off a strong weekend for the MSR driver and puts him at a high point heading into the final stretch of races this year.

Winner - Jacob Abel

Looking at the first half of the weekend, you’d be shocked to see Abel on the winners list. He qualified second to last for Race 1 and spun out on Lap 75 on Saturday evening, where he finished in 27th after retiring.

But Sunday was a redemption for Abel as he secured a career best 11th place from 25th on the grid.

A strategy call that had him staying out of the pits while everyone else came in allowed him to jump up the grid and he finished the afternoon just outside the top 10 for the first time in his rookie IndyCar season.

Previously, Abel’s best result was an 18th place finish in Detroit, and as he told DIVEBOMB earlier this month, he’s just looking for an issue free weekend at this point. He didn’t find that in Iowa as his crash marred the earlier part of the weekend, but getting close to the top 10 for the first time is a huge step in the right direction for the Dale Coyne Racing rookie.

He’s still 57 points off his closest rival (Robert Shwartzman) in the rookie standings, but with five races left in the season there’s still room for upward momentum, and Abel’s result in Race 2 at Iowa could be just the spark he needs.

Winner - Christian Rasmussen

It’s been a great year for oval racing if you’re Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rasmussen–coming into Iowa the Danish driver’s oval results this year were a sixth place in the Indianapolis 500 and a career best third place at Gateway.

Despite his excellent record on oval tracks so far this year, Rasmussen qualified outside the top 12 for both races, starting 19th for Race 1 and 17th for Race 2. At a track where it’s been proven tough for IndyCars to overtake in recent years, he had his work cut out for him.

But Rasmussen charged through the field in both races to secure two top 10 finishes, gaining 13 places to finish sixth in Race 1 and nine places to finish eighth in Race 2.

Two more top 10 finishes under Rasmussen’s belt are a huge positive for his season. His only top 10s this year have come on oval tracks, so it’s a shame for him that there aren’t more oval tracks on the calendar.

Loser - Scott McLaughlin

No team has featured more heavily in the losers column this season than Team Penske, and this weekend was no exception. While Josef Newgarden suffered from tough luck in both races and Will Power had a mechanical issue that saw him retire from Race 2, it was McLaughlin who bore the brunt of the team’s misfortune in Iowa.

A crash early on in his qualifying run meant that he wasn’t able to complete either of his qualifying laps on Saturday, putting him at the very back of the field for both races.

For Race 1 McLaughlin was on the hunt to gain positions right from the start, cutting his way through the field with alarming speed. By Lap 26 he was already up six places, and by Lap 60 he was up to 15th.

He continued on throughout the race, gaining a total of 23 positions to take fourth place (and the Biggest Mover of the race award). It was an incredible result for McLaughlin (and the fans who were looking for some sort of racing action) but as a recovery drive always does, it left us wondering what he could have done from a better position.

McLaughlin was poised for a repeat performance on Sunday, ready to cut through the field and secure another top five finish. But it wasn’t to be for the Penske driver, and he was out on Lap 1 of the race after being collected by the car of Devlin DeFrancesco.

Despite a fourth place in Race 1, McLaughlin’s weekend will leave a sour taste in his mouth, a glimpse of what could have been.

Loser - Nolan Siegel

No one’s weekend took a turn for the worse quite like Siegel’s did. The Arrow McLaren driver had one of his best qualifying results of the year so far and fared better overall than both of his teammates with an eighth place start for Race 1 and a fifth place start for Race 2.

But disaster struck towards the end of Race 1 as Siegel, running in the top 10, hit the wall and brought out the final caution of the day. The damage to his car was not irreparable, but having been diagnosed with a mild concussion, Siegel was not cleared by the medical team to start Race 2 the following day.

What could have been two top 10 finishes for the young McLaren driver turned into a 24th place and a Did Not Start in what was a deeply unfortunate weekend for Siegel. He’ll be heading to Toronto with the hope of recovering before the start of the weekend, but Linus Lundqvist is in place to replace him if he still isn’t cleared by the medical team.

Loser - Iowa Speedway

In the past few years, the double-header at Iowa was one of the most hyped up events on the calendar due to the enthusiastic sponsorship of Hy-Vee. Promotion and concerts saw close to 80,000 fans on race weekends from 2022-2024.

For 2025 Hy-Vee no longer sponsored the race, and it showed both in the promotion and the attendance of the event. Only about 6,000 tickets were sold for each of the races, and the brief shots of the grandstands on the broadcast showed an alarmingly low number of fans.

The TV ratings were uncomfortably low as well, Fox announcing there were 576,000 viewers for Saturday’s race and 719,000 for Sunday. With the re-pave in 2024 hurting the racing product for IndyCar as well, it seems like the writing is on the wall that this track doesn’t have a future in IndyCar right now.