While long known for being the only paved weekly oval in Iowa, Hawkeye Downs Speedway started off as a dirt track in 1925. More than 100 years later, they’ll return to its dirt roots, running those races on its inner ¼-mile oval.
Hawkeye Downs converted the ¼-mile oval to dirt first in 2025 for a couple of races.
“The racing was awesome,” Hawkeye Downs Speedway race director Brian Gibson said. “It put energy back into the Eastern Iowa racing scene. It was a wildly successful idea, but did not pay for itself. There still were startup costs to recover.”
One way to recover those expenses? Just don’t return the track back to pavement. That’s what will take place when the pavement racing season concludes and they cover the track with dirt for the remainder of the year and into the next season for four races in the spring. Since the inner oval uses part of the front straight of the bigger 1/2-mile oval, they will scrape off the dirt of that area for three pavement races on the big track in 2027.
Furthermore, Specialty Racing Promotions, LLC, run by Rick Dripps and Corey Dripps, will operate the dirt track for four dirt shows in 2026, and three on the dirt and three on the pavement in 2027. The Dripps family also promotes Benton County Speedway. With extensive knowledge in dirt-track racing, they will do more than help with prepping the dirt track.
“We will pay for the hauling [of the dirt],” Rick said. “We’ll spread, roll and sheepsfoot the dirt.”
The ½-mile oval surrounding the ¼-mile track will remain paved, but the proposed change did not sit well with the paved racers.
“The problem has been putting butts in the seats,” Gibson said. “It was killing us [with paved races]. We have a big covered grandstand and it always looked empty. We drew 50 to 60 cars. Last fall, that grandstand was full when we put dirt on the track.”
In the end, fans voted with their butts in the stands. The dirt-track crowd turned out, and as the result, one of the best known paved oval facilities in the Midwest will host even more dirt races in the near future.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
