With the twists and turns of Sonoma Raceway and another Shane van Gisbergen victory in the rearview, the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series head across the country to Dover, Del. for a 400-mile fight with the concrete cretin, Dover Motor Speedway.
This 1-mile oval joined the NASCAR schedule in 1969, and it’s been one of the most treacherous on the calendar since its initial inclusion, garnering the infamous “Monster Mile” moniker.
Last repaved in 1995, its striking concrete surface offers drivers the ability to spread out from the apron all the way up to the wall with throttle control becoming the name of the game as drivers struggle for grip and pace.
Races aren’t handed to anyone on a silver platter at this rough and tumble concrete kingdom; races here are earned by outmuscling the competition en route to a statement victory.
Who will topple Miles the Monster? Could it be a young gun or a seasoned vet? It’ll be the team that can hold it all together today while everything seems to be working against them.
Last Week in Sonoma
Tell me if you’ve read this before: Shane van Gisbergen started from pole at a road course and dominated the race on the way to victory lane.
Of course you have, you read about it here last week about Chicago.
While all that popped off, Ty Dillon scooted by Alex Bowman on the last turn of the race to advance in the In-Season Bracket Challenge to join Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, and John Hunter Nemechek in the round of four.
This Week in NASCAR
In the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR, the teams lost their last-ditch effort to keep their charters by filing another preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order, with the TRO ultimately falling short of being approved.
The teams’ temporary injunction filing is still being looked over and will be decided upon the we
In addition, there are more developments in the lawsuit between Rick Ware Racing and Legacy Motor Club as LMC have added new RWR owner TJ Puchyr to the lawsuit for “tortious interference of contract”.
Not only that, Xfinity Series team OUR Motorsports announced this week that they were parting ways with driver Kris Wright and ultimately shutting down after this week’s race at Dover with Kaz Grala in the 5 car.
Tragedy struck the NASCAR world at the end of the work week as news broke of the passing of NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Rex White. At just 5’4″ and 135lbs, White became the sport’s smallest champion in 1960 with his last win in the Cup Series coming in 1962 in Atlanta. He was 95 years old.
Jey and I released another edition of our power rankings with the usual suspects topping the list, but a new challenger continues to climb his way up to the top.
In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, history was made prior to the race with Alpha Prime’s Lavar Scott making his Xfinity Series debut alongside part-time Xfinity Series driver Rajah Caruth, becoming the first Black duo to start a race together in the three NASCAR national series.
As for the race itself, much of the day seemed to be pointing to a dominating performance from Joe Gibbs Racing, but a poor round of pit stops after stage 1 put them behind the 88 car piloted by Connor Zilisch.
The 18-year-old phenom cruised ahead of series veteran Brandon Jones for much of stage 2 and the beginning of stage 3 before the sky opened up and rain fell on the 1-mile oval, ending the race early in favor of Zilisch.
The win was the fourth of the rookie’s already-sterling rookie campaign as he gears up to potentially go racing in the Cup Series with Trackhouse next year.
As for the Cup Series, they didn’t get to compete in on-track activity at all on Saturday as Mother Nature stepped in and washed away practice and qualifying, putting Chase Elliott on pole this weekend. For a full rundown of the starting lineup, click here.
The Race
Today’s race will be broadcast on TNT at 2pm Eastern time with Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte on the call.
The 400 in the race title is for the amount of miles and the amount of laps to be run today, with those 400 laps being split up into three stages ending on the following laps: 120-250-400.
As for the typical Dover race, it looks something like this: 8 cautions for 48 caution laps, 16 lead changes, and an average duration of 3 hours and 30 minutes, or three-and-a-half hours.
When it comes to late in the race, overtime hasn’t made its way to the Monster Mile since 2017, meaning we’ve only had two instances of overtime in the last decade while the lap of final caution typically falls somewhere around lap 346 or 55 laps to go.
Writer’s Pick
For the second straight week, I selected Shane van Gisbergen, and for the second straight week, he came away with the victory.
I’m hoping for a three-peat this week, but it won’t be from picking SVG. I’m going with an old favorite of the writer’s pick section, a seasoned veteran at a racer’s racetrack: Denny Hamlin.
The active wins leader at Dover, Hamlin has crossed the line first here four times, and his Progressive Toyota has flashed pace even at tracks that he’s not accustomed to competing at, like the Chicago street course.
He and crew chief Chris Gayle have been nothing short of stupendous this year, considering they’ve topped my weekly power rankings with Jey since the middle of last month, and much like his former teammate Tony Stewart in 2005, Hamlin’s JGR team shows no signs of slowing down now.
(Top Photo Credit: Derik Hamilton/AP Photo)
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