What Happened?
William Byron saved enough fuel to hold off Chase Briscoe and win the NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway on Sunday, Aug. 3. Behind the duo were Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney and Ryan Preece to round out the top five.
This is Byron’s second win of the season and his first since his Daytona 500 triumph to open the season in February.
What Really Happened?
Sunday featured an odd mixture of what’s great and what’s wrong with modern-day Cup racing.
The beginning of the final stage featured what was perhaps the longest string of yellow flags we’ve seen in recent memory.
Cautions do typically breed cautions, but from lap 219 to 286, the cautions were hot, heavy and going to town on each other.
In that timespan, we saw plenty of single car spins and bent fenders pause the race. It seemed like with every spin, however, another new rivalry was born.
Ty Dillon was among those who received the poor end of multiple run-ins. First, it was with Front Row Motorsports’ No. 34 Todd Gilliland before eventually getting turned again by Kyle Larson.
In fact, many others, including Erik Jones, Shane van Gisbergen, Denny Hamlin, Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar, all were upset with somebody before the end of the day.
It led to some post-race conversations, hurt feelings and sarcastic social media posts by some, all of which are some of the best things of NASCAR.
Then that final green flag run came.
For the final 74 laps, Byron, who was low on fuel and was consistently saving, went unchallenged by everyone behind him despite them all having more fuel and fresher tires.
That doesn’t seem right, does it?
But that was happening for most of the day. Passing the leader under green flag conditions was scarce and if it weren’t for a pass by Keselowski late in stage one over Byron, it would’ve seemed downright impossible.
It happened last week, and it happened again today. Knowing the leader has to save fuel yet doesn’t need to worry about being passed because the near impossibility of doing so takes away almost all tension of said fuel mileage drama.
The moment Byron took the lead and knew he was nearly good on fuel, he had already won the race. We just didn’t know it yet.
It was a mostly entertaining Sunday if you can tolerate the chaos that yellow flags bring, but that final stint of fake drama put a damper on an otherwise decent Sunday.
Who Stood Out?
There were plenty of skeptics that said we wouldn’t see four new winners by the end of the regular season before Sunday, and they were right.
But the RFK Racing duo of Keselowski and Preece were all too close to proving them wrong.
RFK co-owner and driver Keselowski started the day better then he has perhaps the entire year. After starting fifth, the No. 6 Ford took only 68 laps to drive to the leader Byron and pass the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet with less than five laps remaining in the first stage.
On a Sunday where passing the leader under green flag racing seemed impossible, that was impressive, and it was only a preamble of what was to come.
Keselowski not only won the first stage — his first of the year — but the second as well, sweeping both stages in a race for the first time since Martinsville Speedway in 2019. Before the end, he led for 68 circuits around the Iowa oval, which is his most of 2025.
He had a real shot at the win, too. If it wasn’t for the caution flag breeding ground that was the final stage of the race, the No. 6 would have been in the perfect position on fuel mileage to outlast both Byron and Briscoe ahead of him. Indeed, it was probably the closest he’s been to a win all year.
Yet he wasn’t alone. While it certainly wasn’t his employee Preece’s best day of 2025, it was perhaps the closest he’d been to winning at a non-drafting track race.
Despite nearly going a lap down at the beginning, Preece joined his car owner in the top five with even fresher tires in the final stint of the event. Preece, who at one point was in third with fresher tires than those ahead of him, had the eyes of everyone for a few laps.
While it didn’t last long, Preece joined his employer in the top five in fifth with Keselowski in third. Both drivers didn’t secure that playoff spot yet, but they sure showed they had the potential to take one.
Who Fell Flat?
It was an uncharacteristic day of frustration for Larson.
Despite the rest of the Hendrick camp sweeping the top three positions at one point near the end, Larson rarely found himself near the front.
In fact, the best he ran was likely the beginning of the event when he fired off third. From then on, the Elk Grove, Calif., native struggled.
After finishing sixth in stage one, the No. 5 team found itself mired in traffic constantly beating with other drivers – sometimes his own teammates.
Dillon found himself at the wrong end of the No. 5 front bumper as well.
The No. 5 team ended the day in 28th, continuing a stretch of runs including only three top 10s in the last eight races and Larson’s longest winless stretch since 2023.
Yes, that doesn’t seem all that bad to a general audience, but for a driver that some consider to be one of the best in the world, those are low-performing results.
Paint Scheme of the Race
God dangit, Bobby!
Garage 66 doesn’t enter Cup race weekends very often, and when they do, they rarely ever have memorable paint schemes.
But at Iowa, in the heartland of corn and agricultural products, they entered the market of propane and propane accessories.
Every once in a while, there comes a car design and sponsor that attracts the attention of internet memes and breeds the potential for some hilarious social content.
Joey Gase‘s No. 66 King of the Hill car did exactly that.
Throughout the week, there were plenty of jokes relevant to the rebooted animated series to be seen. For a team with a best finish of 21st in 2025, that could bring some much-needed attention.
If you know, you know.
What’s Next?
The Cup Series makes its final road course stop before the playoffs.
The sport will return to the Finger Lakes of New York for its annual trip to Watkins Glen International. The 90-lap event will be broadcasted live on USA Network on Sunday, Aug. 10 with coverage beginning at 2 p.m. ET.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT