Lloyd wins, Guthrie injured, Klein extremely lucky

If you watched the Iowa 100 online today then you learned at least one thing about the new Iowa Speedway: Beware of Turn Four.

From the start of the race several drivers had incidents of either going too wide or getting too dicey with others in the final turn on the sub-mile track that left all those fans in the front straightaway with a lovely view of sliding or slamming vehicles. As Pressdog would say, it was a "festival of carbon fiber". Let's see how many ICS drivers lift or dive low in that turn tomorrow.


The race itself was a two-man battle between Alex Lloyd and Wade Cunningham. Wade did a fine job of blocking defending by going low in the turns and high elsewhere to use up all available lines, until with 12 laps to go he gave Alex room to go low and that was that.

Hideki Mutoh put together another solid effort, finishing third. For a guy who had never driven an oval, he's learning rather expeditiously. Mutoh battled the last half of the race with Sean Guthrie, who got high in (surprise!) turn four and crashed hard into the pit wall. Guthrie got out under his own power but was later reported to have a broken foot.

Meanwhile, a sincere "crap your pants" moment occurred when Jonathan Klein got caught up in (take a guess) turn four and slid down the track. At nearly 90 degrees. In traffic. All I could think of was "Alex Zanardi" before Andrew Prendeville incredibly dove down to the grass to avoid t-boning Klein. Missed him by thatmuch, thankfully.

Congratulations, Alex. That's six wins and two places in eight races. Sheesh! I hope you're getting excited about driving for Marty Roth in Chicago later this season.