At the end of the day, NASCAR owns the track. All the equity Indycar might be able to build can be taken from them in an instant, and in fact if Hy-Vee and NASCAR had discussions about what an agreement between those two entities for promotion and activation might resemble, would it in any way surprise you? There's a reason I've been harping on and on about track rentals not being the solution for Indycar and that is why.
It’s probably been as strong as ever since Penske and HyVee took on the risk as promoters the past two years. It’s certainly no sure thing now though. With as much money as they put into the event they need to fill the grandstands and especially all those massive temporary suites they bring in. It wouldn’t take much to make it non viable.
As I said already on the page before, it's an argument that has been fabricated to justify a position. If your position is that Indycar should be full of Americans from short track racing roots, then the idea that there is some sort of conspiracy which exists to keep the thing you want from happening is much more attractive to you than it would be to go through and understand the nuanced reasons as to why Indycar is what it is. If however there is no conspiracy or desire from on high to eliminate oval racing, then that means that the structure of Indycar as it is today has happened organically as a result of market changes, incentive structures, etc and thus that your vision of what Indycar should be is antiquated and obsolete. How many people want to raise their hands and say, "Yes, I want to know that my ideas are 60 years behind the curve"?
Iowa can be solvent simply by putting a Cup race there. That alone changes the economics enough to make the place worthwhile. The issue NASCAR has is that their Cup sponsors by and large don't care if they are in Iowa. Not enough people living there, the people who live there have a lower-than-national-median household and per capita income, they lag behind the national averages for broadband access and internet use, they have a larger population of elderly than the national average, etc etc etc.
The Cup and Indy dates are 4 weeks apart, should be good for now.
NASCAR isn't concerned with the solvency of Iowa Speedway. NASCAR is concerned with media rights. Trying to boost the value of their media rights is why they ran the Chicago Street Race and why the Busch Clash is held inside of the LA Coliseum. Iowa is, however, a great piece of insurance in that they can run races there at basically no cost to themselves and pay themselves the TV money should they not get someone else like Montreal on board.