Iowa Speedway had been on the Cup Series schedule for only two seasons, and until Sunday, its third run, no Toyota had won there. Ryan Blaney took the inaugural 2024 race, and William Byron defended it last year for Chevrolet. Ty Gibbs, who qualified sixth and looked like a factor from the drop of the green flag, ended that streak, though not before his day nearly came apart.
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His first pit stop of the day went wrong when the jack dropped too early during the tire change, and he fell to 28th. “You’re kind of hosed after that deal,” he said afterward. “So you’ve got to stay locked in and keep working.” Now, at a track where passing is brutal, Gibbs spent the rest of the afternoon working through traffic, and by the closing stretch he was running second, right on teammate Christopher Bell’s bumper.
With 60 laps to go, both pitted under green. Bell for four tires, while crew chief Tyler Allen sent Gibbs out on just two.
“We were leaning two tires the whole time,” Allen said. “It was a matter of when we were gonna take them. I knew he was leaning four. So I heard the 20 say pit, so we pit, and I took rights, knowing I would jump him and that Ty was gonna have a lot of work to do.”
The quicker stop jumped Gibbs ahead of both Bell and pole-sitter Ryan Blaney on pit road. The official race lead, though, stayed with Ross Chastain, who’d stretched his fuel run. Only once Chastain pitted with 20 laps left did Gibbs inherit the top spot outright, holding off a hard-charging Bell to win by 0.253 seconds. It was his second Cup victory of the year, and his career, coming four months after another bold Allen strategy call delivered his first, at Bristol.
The call was more strategic than it seemed, too. “We knew after practice the left sides weren’t wearing much and they tended to refire OK,” Allen told the AP.
Gibbs was also flying the flag for a Toyota camp fighting its own equipment all weekend. Practice brake issues hit Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe hardest, with Riley Herbst also affected. The fallout traced to setup data shared through the JGR–23XI technical alliance.
Still, Bell, notably, was untouched by it and led 108 laps before Gibbs got past him; Blaney, third at the flag, topped the box score with a race-high 129 laps out front. Bubba Wallace looked like a threat too, leading 35 laps before a pit-road speeding penalty sent him to the back.
That said, Gibbs never second-guessed the call. He found out the plan already heading down pit road. “I can’t do anything about it,” he said, “so you just run with it.”