This weekend NASCAR heads to the first state to take on the Monster Mile. Dover International Speedway is a track that can bite you at any time, and it usually does. Talladega and Martinsville are usually considered the two wild-card races in the Chase, but Dover could be put into that category as well.
Dover can be considered a wild-card race because anything can happen here. Dover is fast, high-banked, and has very narrow straightaways, so drivers typically do not have a lot of time to react if something happens right in front of them. And a lot of times at Dover, something does indeed happen.
In the Chase race at Dover in 2007 there was a big wreck on a late restart that took out about half of the Chase contenders. In 2004 in the June race about 24 cars wrecked going into turn three. In the spring race in 2008, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Elliott Sadler, Bill Elliott and Paul Menard were all in one wreck early in the race. In the September 2009 race Joey Logano barrel-rolled seven times down the banking of turns three and four. Trouble can happen in a hurry, and because the race track is so fast and narrow, single car spins usually turn into multi-car pileups.
However, sometimes there are races at Dover where almost nothing happens. Sometimes the spins will just be a single car incident. Sometimes Dover races will be full of very long green-flag runs, and multiple ocassions of green-flag pit stops.
To win at Dover you need to do everything correctly. The drivers, the crew chiefs, and the pit crews all have to be on their A-game. The team needs to get the setup perfectly. The team also needs to survive.
Drivers to Watch:
Jimmie Johnson: Johnson has won three of the last four Sprint Cup Series races at Dover, including the last two Chase races. In 19 appearances at the Monster Mile, Jimmie has six wins, eight top-fives and 13 top-10s.
Matt Kenseth: Dover is Kenseth's favorite race track, even though it is the site of his infamous pit road crash in 2004. Kenseth won here in May, as well as in June of 2006. Kenseth has 11 top-fives and 16 top-10s in 25 career races.
Tony Stewart: After Stewart himself said the he would not be a contender for the championship, he enters Dover as the points leader and the winner of the last two races. He has two wins at Dover, but those came over a decade ago. Stewart's last two finishes at Dover have been a 21st and a 29th.
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