NEWTON, Iowa – Tender corn stalks that will more than knee high by the Fourth of July greet visitors as they pass through the tunnel into the spacious Iowa Speedway infield.

“Why sure,” Iowa Speedway president Stan Clement says with the zealous conviction of a native Hawkeye. “The Iowa Corn Growers (Association) are a big part of the speedway.”

And Clement, along with his extended family, is a big part of the speedway that opened in September 2006 and played host to the IZOD IndyCar Series the following June.

On June 30, 2011, principal ownership of the facility off I-80 was transferred to the Clement family, which purchased the 91.57 percent ownership share of the Manatt family for $19.2 million. The remaining 8.43 percent is held by track designer and former NASCAR champion Rusty Wallace.

Conrad Clement, founder and former owner of Featherlite Trailers in Cresco, Iowa, is the Iowa Speedway Board of Directors Chairman. Doug Fritz, former president of Richmond International Raceway, was named CEO in autumn.

“We’re excited and it took a good deal of time to put this together,” Stan Clement says. “We’re excited for the state of Iowa. We’ve worked with each governor, the legislature, the city of Newton, and happy to be able to get that accomplished and take it to the next level.

“Our base from the beginning was with INDYCAR in 2007. It was like a small Indianapolis 500 for the state of Iowa. That’s the kind of expectations that Iowa Speedway will always drive for. From the beginning, when our family would go to the Indy 500, the festivities that went on there that’s what we bring to Iowa. That’s what Iowa never had before.”

Clement, a Newton resident, ambles around the property in a stylish yellow golf cart, pointing out improvements such as smoothing sections of the .875-mile track surface this spring including rolling a pronounced bump over the tunnel between Turns 1 and 2. Short- and long-term projects are focused on additional events.

“(Before the purchase) we did market analyses. Lots of people asked us, ‘Where are you going to get your fans?’ ’’Clement says. “Our fans come from the upper Midwest for the majority, but we also draw from 23 different states. They are season ticket-holders in addition to single-event tickets. It’s a unique track, it’s a fast track. It’s designed right. If you look at last year’s Iowa Corn Indy 250, when they went around Turn 2 there were five or six cars that could have won that race it was that competitive.

“That’s what we have that maybe other tracks don’t have; that’s how good we think we are. We’re always looking for something better, newer. We have a saying at Iowa Speedway; it’s a Rusty Wallace quote: ‘You keep rubbin' it till you make it better.’ ’’