Hawkeye Downs drivers promoting Eastern Iowa racing during NASCAR Cup weekend at Iowa Speedway

CEDAR RAPIDS — This weekend’s “NASCAR Summer Race Weekend” at Iowa Speedway in Newton is not just an opportunity for local racecar drivers to be fans.

For drivers from Hawkeye Downs Speedway, it will be a chance to tout the quality of Eastern Iowa auto racing.

“The message will be, ‘We have good racing here in Eastern Iowa,’” said Cedar Rapids driver Danny Lehmkuhl, who will help represent Hawkeye Downs at the NASCAR Fan Zone at Iowa Speedway this weekend. “We have a NASCAR-sanctioned track. The late model that I drive looks a lot like a NASCAR, so to speak. Some of these people can come out and support local folks like myself and others that are spending our time and money racing and enjoying ourselves.

“We have good racing and we have a lot of the same excitement that they see there, just with local names. There’s local businesses and local people putting their hearts and souls into it.”

The weekend races begin Friday at 6 p.m. with the Atlas 150, an ARCA Menards Series race. A pair of NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers from Iowa — Grimes’ Brett Moffitt and Cedar Rapids Xavier graduate Joey Gase — will compete in Saturday’s Hy-Vee Perks 250 at 2:30 before the weekend concludes Sunday at 6 with the Iowa Corn 350, Iowa’s first NASCAR Cup Series race.

Saturday and Sunday are sold out.

“A lot of our racers are headed out here to watch,” Downs Race Director Brian Gibson said. “The group of us that were able to race with some of those guys back in the day and be around them, we're excited to come out here and see the big leagues. We’ve all been waiting a long time for a Cup race at Newton speedway and we finally got it, so we’re all headed out to take it in.”

Hawkeye Downs’ first foray as a NASCAR-sanctioned racetrack ended in the late 1980s. Once the track was paved, it was another 35 years before Downs and NASCAR reunited in 2023 and the weekly racing program was named the “NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series.”

“It has helped out the racer,” said Gibson, 57. “It has increased our point fund purse at the end of the year and that’s really important to the racer. It brought in some good support in many different ways. … Just having that recognizable name, that NASCAR banner marketing logo.

“If somebody is wondering what Hawkeye Downs is, if they are from out of town and not familiar with it, as soon as you tie that NASCAR brand on to Hawkeye Downs, it’s ‘Oh! All right, it’s a racetrack and they’re going to have car racing out there.’”

To help promote its weekly racing — which was initially moved to Thursday this week before canceling due to the threat of severe weather — the Downs contingent will bring four race cars — Gibson’s Late Model, a Sportsman from Cedar Rapids’ Todd Ness and a pair of Legend cars from Warren Robb and Lehmkuhl — to Iowa Speedway.

The cars will be featured at the NASCAR Fan Zone, an on-site, interactive area full of free displays and activities that opens at noon Friday and continues through Sunday.

“It’s just a really cool opportunity for me to take my sponsors and put them on that stage,” said Lehmkuhl, 35. “They’re expecting over 100,000 people there and for me to be able to put my sponsors on a car out in front of everybody, it's just a really cool opportunity to let people know what's going on over here in Cedar Rapids.”

Gibson, Lehmkuhl and Walford’s Corey Crispin — Downs’ defending points champion in the Hornets Division — also will participate in a panel interview Saturday at 10:45 a.m. at the NASCAR Fan Zone.

“I’d like to show people that there's enough race fans in Iowa, in this part of the country, to sell out Iowa Speedway for Cup Series,” said Crispin, 23. “So I'd like to get some of those people to come to Hawkeye Downs and see that we can put on a good show every Friday night.”