If you promote it, they will come. Hy-Vee’s efforts a dream scenario for IndyCar in Iowa.
DES MOINES, Iowa – Jack Harvey grew up surrounded by fields and agriculture and that special tight-knit, small-town feel, but he never thought he’d find a place that felt like “home” in Iowa. And yet, the British IndyCar driver has found over his trips to Des Moines in recent months, he’s become a household name and a local celebrity. Trot out most of the IndyCar paddock in street clothes in any of the biggest cities in the U.S., and they most likely go unrecognized.
Harvey gets stopped just about everywhere he walks in Iowa, thanks to life-sized cutouts in grocery stores around the state. He's being featured on every advertising platform imaginable with a sponsor that two years ago had never touched IndyCar and decided to pour millions of dollars into a revitalized staple of the IndyCar calendar to turn just another race into a massive event.
In Newton, Iowa this weekend for Saturday’s Hy-VeeDeals.com 250 and Sunday’s Hy-Vee Salute to Farmers 300, Harvey and others around the paddock see potential for a landmark event that could change the way races across the calendar are promoted and delivered to steadfast and brand-new fans alike. Nearly half of the 17 races (eight, to be exact) have title sponsors that have long been series partners in much larger capacities (Firestone, Honda/Acura, Chevy and GMR). Three others (XPEL, Sonsio and Gallagher) are Team Penske partners, with Andretti’s Gainbridge linked with the Indy 500. The Grand Prix of Portland still lacks a title sponsor altogether.
At the moment, there are very few race sponsors that have found IndyCar in a truly organic way, and Hy-Vee sets itself apart, perhaps along with Nashville’s Big Machine Label Group, as ones willing to pour upwards of close to $10 million for a single race weekend to give it a world-class feel. There’s no resting on the novelty of camping or on the uniqueness of the track itself or the draw of a big city.
Hy-Vee and its partners across Iowa have had to work to convince close to 40,000 fans per day Saturday and Sunday that spending one of their last summer weekends in small-town Iowa is worth it. They’ve done so with gallons upon gallons of paint, state-of-the-art portable suites, Grammy-winning musical acts and an online app where campers can order supplies straight to their site.
At Thursday’s welcome luncheon, Hy-Vee’s standard of excellence was compared multiple times by multiple guests to Team Penske’s ‘Penske Perfect’, without an apparent ounce of hyperbole.
“As a series, for sure I’d be looking for about 15 other (race title sponsors) like Hy-Vee,” Harvey said Thursday. “How do we find them? I’m not entirely sure, but I’d love if we did, cause what they brought to the series really is resetting the bar for how sponsors can utilize the series, and ultimately everybody wants to win. You want this weekend to be great for Hy-Vee as a company, as well as the state of Iowa, but you also want it to be great for the series and fans.
“I think you could invite all the tracks to come here and see for themselves that if you have the right group of people with the same enthusiasm and resources — and to be fair, Hy-Vee has really thrown a lot at this event because it’s a choice they’ve made to do it. What other tracks decide to do or not do is really up to them. I think this is about applying pressure without really intentionally doing so in a negative way. If I was a track owner or promoter outside of this weekend, I’d be looking and saying, ‘We have to do something next year to keep up.’”
More on the Iowa race weekend:
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Not every race promoter has the money, the infrastructure or, frankly, the interest in bringing in concert acts like Tim McGraw, Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton and Florida Georgia Line, all of whom will play either pre or post-race Saturday or Sunday. But as like Harvey and so many other drivers and decision-makers have said in recent months, IndyCar race weekends must start to feel more like full-fledged events that can draw the interest of someone who’s never thought much about racing. IndyCar’s street races — St. Pete, Long Beach, Detroit, Toronto and now Nashville — have long been heralded for their abilities to merge a street festival with a high-level motorsports event, but even they are evolving.
Many of IndyCar’s permanent road courses use wire-to-wire schedules full of on-track activity, plus the lure of camping, to help flood their gates, though some clearly do better than others. But for many years, outside the 500 and recently the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at WWT Raceway, IndyCar’s offering of successful oval races has waned. Before Hy-Vee swooped in and saved it, Iowa had fallen off the schedule altogether following 2020, and Texas Motor Speedway has now for several years struggled to draw even a few thousand fans at a place that once drew roughly 100,000.
In Texas’s case, it boils down to this: Through various track renovations, the circuit has become something that takes an inordinate amount of work to produce even decent open-wheel racing. Fans have left in consequence, and those currently in charge haven’t been willing to make the necessary investments to try and win them back.
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That’s where Hy-Vee differs.
“To have this level of sponsor in what Hy-Vee has come into the series and done with activation, we’re all very lucky (at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) to be the team that gets to represent them,” Harvey said. “I really hadn’t spent too much time in Iowa before, and I live in Indy and I’m from the U.K., and this feels like a home race for me.
“The amount of people that stop us to wish us good luck or say so on social media is just beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. You even walk into a Hy-Vee Fast and Fresh (basically a convenience store/gas station), and you still can’t really escape us, which is hilarious in so many ways, just to see my face everywhere.”
With so much visibility, one can only imagine just how important a strong performance on-track would be for Harvey and RLL. It was Graham Rahal’s run to third-place at Race No. 2 of a 2020 Iowa doubleheader while sporting a Hy-Vee livery that sparked this relationship. Harvey hasn't finished higher than 13th through nine starts with his new team. Having missed Texas due to concussion protocols, he sits 20th in points. His teammates, rookie Christian Lundgaard and Rahal, are only mildly better in 16th and 13th, respectively, with eight total top-10s between them and a best-finish of fourth for Rahal last Sunday at Toronto.
Ovals, though, have not been their strong suit. They qualified as three of the slowest four cars at Texas, and at the 500, Rahal was fastest of the bunch in 21st, while his teammates sat 31st and 32nd — the two slowest cars to have logged a run. Their hope is stronger, more consistent, faster results on road and street courses of late can somehow translate over.
“When you come in and embrace the energy and atmosphere, and you go into Hy-Vee and see your face and the well-wishes and all those things, it’s rejuvenating, refreshing and encouraging,” Harvey said. “Globally as a team, we’ve been showing more pace, and you get the sense the season is starting to turn for us. Naturally, I wish I’d been better this year, and you can’t sugarcoat that any which way, and you click your fingers, and the season’s going to be done again.
“Obviously, you want to have a good race because it’s a home race, but with the way the season’s gone, at this point, you just want to get a good result, so wherever you can get that positivity or that rejuvenation, I don’t care where that comes from. I’ll take it.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Hy-Vee, Jack Harvey have a lot riding on Iowa doubleheader
