Race Report: SYNK 275 powered by Sukup

NEWTON, Iowa (July 12, 2025) -- The SYNK 275 at Iowa Speedway went off without a hitch on Saturday afternoon after severe storms on Friday washed out practice. Today's schedule was adjusted to give teams a morning practice session and qualifying took place in the early afternoon.

Santino Ferrucci and David Malukas both qualified in the top 10 with Ferrucci starting ninth in the Sexton Properties Chevrolet and Malukas alongside in 10th in the Clarience Technologies Chevrolet.

They ran in that position until 25 laps into the 275 lapper around the high-banked, 7/8-mile oval.

Malukas dropped back to 13th as his car developed understeer (pushing). Ferrucci too battled understeer but was able to hold his ninth place position. When the yellow came out on lap 75 for Jacob Abel's wall-banger in Turn 2 (he wasn't hurt), everyone pitted.

Neither crew made wing adjustments at that time as they were unwilling to give up the extra time in the pits which would have cost them some spots. By the time of the second round of stops, Malukas did get a wing adjustment after he had slipped back to 17th. Ferrucci did not but he was able to still maintain his ninth position.

The wing adjustment proved crucial for Malukas as he worked his way back to 12th. Ferrucci took a wing adjustment on his final stop and that enabled him to gain two spots and move up to seventh. However, in the final laps he dropped to eighth.

"Tough, tough day," Ferrucci said. "Honestly, I thought we had a much better race car than we did, just based off of practice, but as it turned out, we were incredibly tight and just trying to battle that. You can only do so much, you're max-tooling in the car. You can only put so much front wing in before you tip it over. So, hands tied but happy to come home with a top-10, and ready to make some overnight changes and get back after it tomorrow."

Ferrucci will have a lot more work to do tomorrow as he will start 20th. On the second lap of his qualifying run today (which set his grid spot for tomorrow's Farm to Finish 275), a part broke which upset the car's balance as he went into turn 1. He nearly lost control of the car which became suddenly loose, but he was able to complete the run, albeit slower  than his first lap.

Malukas was satisfied with his 12th place finish because they learned what to do for tomorrow's race in which he will start third. He was on the pole until Felix Rosenqvist and eventual pole winner Alex Palou beat him in the final minutes.

Malukas summed up his race today, explaining, "We missed the mark on the setup when we first

went out, so it was a little bit of a survival game and then the yellow came out for the first stop. So we decided not to do any changes with the wing, just not to change the balance. But we were going backwards and fell back to 17th. On the next stop, we were able to do the turns of wing and the car just kicked alive and we worked our way from 17th up to 12th."

He cited the factors that contributed to the less than optimal starting race setup, saying, "With the rain and the tornado yesterday, it cut our (practice) session even shorter. We didn't do the testing here that everybody else did. So, I think that showed there and we missed the mark on where the car needed to be by the end of a race stint. But we learned, so thankfully, we have another race going tomorrow."

Pato O'Ward claimed the victory defeating NTT P1 Award winner Josef Newgarden, who led 232 laps and finished second. He was followed by his teammates Will Power and Scott McLaughlin, who turned in the most impressive run of the day, coming from last (after crashing in qualifying) to finish fourth. Alex Palou rounded out the top five.

The Farm to Finish 275 will be broadcast live by FOX starting at 1 p.m. ET.