NEWTON, Iowa — Tonight’s inaugural Cup race at Iowa Speedway comes with a variety of questions for drivers and teams.

A sold-out crowd will be on hand to witness the event, which will air on USA Network (pre-race coverage begins at 6:30 p.m. ET)

Here is a look at three things to watch in tonight’s race:

How will the tires perform?

Five Cup teams had tire issues in Friday’s 50-minute practice. All had issues around 20 laps on a set of tires. Christopher Bell, Austin Cindric, Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs each had a right front tire go down in practice. Ross Chastain had a left rear go down in practice.

“What is even more concerning and makes it way more confusing is the fact that we had three cars out here at a tire test that did 50-lap runs and none of us blew a tire,” Bell said after Friday’s practice. “So, I don’t know. But yes, It is very, very alarming and there are red flags all over the place that we had so many tire issues today.”

Bell did the tire confirmation test May 28 with Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski.

There was a feeling by some in the garage that some of the tire issues Friday could have been related to lower air pressures.

A key will be how teams react and how the track changes as the race progresses into the night and cooler temperatures.

Who will be the inaugural winner?

Kyle Larson will start on the pole, but he says he thinks many drivers enter this race believing they can win.

“I think there’s still so much unknown, so I think that’s exciting for race fans and all that … even drivers,” Larson said. “There’s probably more drivers in the field that feel like they have an opportunity to have a good run because if this (track surface) was old, worn out, bumpy – your Hendrick Motorsports teams, your Joe Gibbs Racing teams, they’re going to be the ones dominating.

“Where now, I feel like – especially with qualifying shaking-up the order and all that, I think the starting lineup is a little bit odd. So yeah, I think more teams probably feel like they have an opportunity.

Joey Logano enters this weekend at Iowa outside the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs with 10 races left in the regular season.

One driver to watch could be Joey Logano, who starts 11th and has won three of the last eight races at newer events for the series.

Logano won the 2021 Bristol Dirt race, the 2022 Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the inaugural Cup race at World Wide Technology Raceway in 2022.

Logano’s most recent win came in last month’s All-Star Race on a repaved North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Playoff bubble

Bubba Wallace enters the race holding the final playoff spot.

Two former champions are close behind. Kyle Busch is eight points behind Wallace. Logano is 16 points behind Wallace. Chase Briscoe is 27 points behind Wallace.

Wallace starts 16th. Busch starts seventh. Logano starts 11th. Briscoe starts sixth.

Nine races will remain in the regular season after Sunday night’s race.

NEWTON, Iowa — Runner-up Riley Herbst ran into winner Sam Mayer’s car after Saturday’s Xfinity race at Iowa Speedway but when Mayer explained what “makes me so mad,” he wasn’t referencing that contact.

Mayer, who turns 21 on June 26, earned his second victory of the season and his sixth in 99 career Xfinity starts.

While NASCAR’s Silly Season has focused on where the Stewart-Haas Racing drivers could go or where Craftsman Truck Series driver Corey Heim could be headed, Mayer’s name rarely is mentioned among the young prospects for potential Cup rides.

Asked about that after the race, Mayer said: “Yeah, it kind of pisses me off, to be honest with you. I feel like we’ve proved ourselves a lot more. Like I’m dead serious. It makes me so mad that my name isn’t in more hats for race teams. So hopefully today kind of put my name in a couple of them. We’re working really hard. I want to go Sunday racing, obviously, one day. How soon? I don’t know.

“Me, (Herbst), all those guys, there are so many people in the top five and top 10 that have something to prove. If you can be top dog in those guys, I feel like you deserve it.”

Mayer’s win was his seventh top-four finish in the last nine races. His Iowa victory marked his first victory on a short track. His other wins had come at road courses (Road America, Watkins Glen and Charlotte Roval) and 1.5-mile tracks (Homestead and Texas).

As for what happened after the race? Herbst ran into Mayer’s car and flattened Mayer’s left rear tire.

“I like racing Sam, but stage one or two he just absolutely brooms me,” Herbst told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns after the race. “We were racing clean for fourth and takes us back to 10th and then doors me down the back straightaway before the green-white-checker. It’s just frustrating the way he wants to do that.”

Herbst later said: “There’s no issue. I was just frustrated by the way … he slid me, I think it was stage one or two and he wasn’t clear. He drove both of us up to the fence in Turns 1 and 2. … At the end, it was fair racing on the green-white-checkered. It was fun. I enjoy racing Sam, but I was frustrated early in the race.”

Said Mayer of the contact after the race from Herbst: “I knew immediately it was either … ‘I hate you’ or ‘Congratulations.’ I think that we know the answer to that unfortunately. I feel really bad. Obviously I got into him earlier.

“It was so top dominant there at the end. We were all fighting for literally four feet of asphalt around the whole race track. Just did all I could to get there and just overstepped it a little bit.”

NEWTON, Iowa — Christopher Bell likes that the NASCAR Cup Series will be at Iowa Speedway for the first time.

Heading into Sunday’s race, the .875-mile track isn’t quite the one he remembers.

Bell has seven top-five finishes in nine starts at the track in NASCAR’s other series, including two wins in the Xfinity Series.

But the track has a different look this weekend after a partial repaving in the turns. The top-to-bottom racing that was a characteristic of the track in the past may not be there for Sunday’s 350-lap race.

“If we were on the old pavement, I feel like it would be a big advantage to have,” Bell said. “But with the repave we have, it’s essentially a new racetrack. I really think it’s anybody’s ballgame.”

An estimated 40,000 fans are expected for Sunday’s race. Tickets for Saturday and Sunday were sold out by the spring, and Friday’s Cup and Xfinity practice as well as an ARCA Menards Series race were nearly sold out.

The first Cup race is an accomplishment after years of the track trying to get on the schedule.

The track, designed by NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace, opened in 2006. The IndyCar Series held its first race at the track in 2007, with NASCAR’s Xfinity and Truck series coming to the track in 2009.

NASCAR purchased the track in 2013 to save it from financial problems, but it seemed destined for closing after the COVID-19 pandemic, when only an ARCA Menards Series race was held there in 2021. But the IndyCar Series, which skipped coming to the track in 2021, came back with doubleheaders in 2022 and 2023 that drew near-capacity crowds.

NASCAR then announced last fall that the track would be getting a Cup Series race this season, as well as a return of the Xfinity Series.

Eighteen of the drivers in Sunday’s field have at least one win at the track in one of NASCAR’s other series.

“I walked out here and I felt like it was a lot bigger than I remembered,” said Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who won three Xfinity Series races here. “I felt like it was a pretty small short track, but obviously you get going pretty quick here.”

“It’s still Iowa, but it’s not the same Iowa,” said Chase Briscoe, who won the last Xfinity Series race at the track in 2019.

Bell had the same wistfulness.

“I miss the old Iowa,” he said.

Larson up front

Kyle Larson will start on the pole after posting a fast lap of 136.458 mph. Ryan Blaney was second at 136.311.

Saturday morning’s rain wiped out Xfinity Series qualifying and forced NASCAR to alter the Cup Series qualifying. Drivers went out in two groups, with the top five in each group filling the top 10 qualifying spots.

Larson was the last driver to go through qualifying.

“It helped to go at last,” Larson said. “I’m sure the track was getting a little bit better.”

If you build it

Joey Logano was 16 years old when he competed in the first race at Iowa Speedway, finishing 40th in a Hooters Pro Cup event. So he wasn’t surprised at the reception the Cup drivers have received this weekend.

“They love it,” said Logano, who won at the track less than a year later in a K&N Pro Series race. “I noticed that 20 years ago or whatever it was when the stands were packed for a Pro Cup race. So you can imagine what it’s like to get a Cup race. I joked around, I said, ‘I don’t know where all of these fans are coming from, there are a lot of corn fields out here.’ It’s kind of like the Field of Dreams.”

Hawkeye State

Corey LaJoie will get some attention from Iowa fans just because of his paint scheme. LaJoie’s No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet is carrying the Tigerhawk logo of the University of Iowa’s sports teams.

Gainbridge is LaJoie’s primary sponsor, and former Iowa’s women’s basketball player Caitlin Clark, who has her own endorsement deal with Gainbridge, made note of LaJoie’s car in a video released on social media on Friday.

“I know I’ll be rooting for the black-and-gold car,” said Clark, the reigning national player of the year who finished her college career as the NCAA’s Division I all-time scoring leader. She was the No. 1 pick in this year’s WNBA draft.