2025 Iowa Race Report

The 2025 Iowa Race Reports includes bitten fingernails due to fuel concerns, a Brad Keselowski surge, and a rash of cautions that threw a bunch of strategies out the window. It seemed to me a much more exciting race than the only other Cup Series Race there. That was in 2024, and Ryan Blaney pretty much ran away with it.

Caution/Lead-O-Gram

As seen below, in the 2024 Iowa (I like Iowa so much I put it in there twice!) caution/lead-o-gram, polesitter Chase Briscoe did not lead the first lap. In fact, William Byron led the entire first stage, coming back only in the latter part of the third stage to take the lead and, eventually, the win.

Cautions

There were a total of 12 cautions for this race, with only two of those planned.

Amazingly, even with 12 cautions over just 306.25 miles, there were zero DNFs. The rash of cautions in the middle of the race really messed up a number of teams’ race strategies.

Cautions took up 20.6% of the race. None of the cautions were particularly noteworthy. Aside from Shane van Gisbergen’s solo spin, the accidents were all the result of two drivers jockeying for limited space. The debris caution was because Todd Gilliland’s car lost its passenger-side window.

Lead Changes

There were 10 lead changes, but let’s keep in mind that this is one of the shorter races — just over 300 miles.

Despite people saying there were ‘no green-flag lead changes’, there were. Keselowski was responsible for both. The lead changed twice on restarts: Once at the race start, when William Byron got ahead of Briscoe, and again when Byron took the lead for the final time.

Two of the lead changes were thanks to pit crews during yellow-flag stops. The remaining four were simply due to drivers pitting (or not) at various times throughout the race.

According to NASCAR, there were 27 passes for the lead under the green flag throughout the race.

And that’s the 2025 Iowa Race Report!