Chase Elliott celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway on May 2, 2022. Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
The NASCAR Cup Series will feature a markedly different style of door-to-door competition this week as it moves to Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday.
The one-mile concrete track’s brand of tight racing is quite different from the 2.6-mile Talladega Superspeedway where the series raced last weekend.
Kyle Busch – a three-time Dover winner – shows up as one of only three drivers to have doubled their 2023 trophy total (two wins) this season, having bested the field on the Talladega high banks last Sunday in one of the most action-packed races of the season, featuring 57 lead changes.
Busch is one of eight active drivers to have won at Dover’s “Monster Mile” previously and his three-wins there ties him with Kevin Harvick and Dover’s “hometown favorite” Martin Truex, Jr. as most among active drivers.
Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman have also won at the track.
In fact, there have been nine different winners in the past 10 Dover races. Defending race winner, Elliott is the only repeat winner in that time (2018 and 2022). The season mirrors that competitive diversity too. Through the opening 10 races there have been seven different winners from six different race organizations.
This will be the third week back behind the wheel for Elliott after he missed six weeks of competition with a broken leg (suffered in an off-day snowboarding accident). The 2020 series champion is currently ranked 31st in the standings and needs to score a win to secure his Playoff eligibility for this year. Dover is certainly a good opportunity for Elliott, who earned his first win of the 2022 season there and would love to do the same on Sunday. He has an amazing nine top-five finishes in 12 starts at the track.
Elliott’s average finish (9.750) is second only to his Hendrick teammate Kyle Larson’s 6.929 average at the Monster Mile. Larson won the 2019 Dover race and he and Elliott are the only two competitors with average finishes better than 10th.
Of note, their Hendrick Motorsports’ teammate Bowman, will not be competing this weekend. He was injured driving in a Sprint Car race this week and is expected to miss at least three weeks. NASCAR Xfinity Series regular – and defending Xfinity Series Dover race winner Josh Berry will pull double-duty – again – and drive Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet in his absence. Berry just filled in for Elliott during the former series champ’s own medical situation.
Two of those boasting outstanding Dover resumes are also two of the most motivated this weekend. Harvick, who will be retiring from NASCAR at the end of the season, is hoping to snap a 22-race winless streak and has been fast this season with top-10 finishes in half the 10 races to date. His last win at Dover was in the Spring of 2018. His 1,666 laps led total at Dover is the most among active drivers and he’s finished top-10 in 23 of his 42 previous starts at the Monster Mile.
“Dover is one of those race tracks where if we don’t win, we feel like we’ve let everybody down,” Harvick said. “It’s been a great race track for us and we’ve had some really dumb luck there with lug nuts and valve stems, but outside of those few races, it’s been a very successful racetrack for us. Dover is just one of those grind-it-out-type of races.”
Truex is hoping some “hometown” magic may help him. The New Jersey-native and 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion considers Dover his home track and fittingly, he earned his first career series victory there in 2007.
His last Dover win came in 2019 when he led more than 100 laps – something he’s done five times at Dover in his career. Truex won the non-points paying Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum to open the 2023 season and scored his first top-five (third place) at Martinsville two weeks ago. His last points-paying victory came at Richmond on September 11, 2021.
NXS: Xfinity Series Drivers Ready To Fight The Monster Mile
The NASCAR Xfinity Series heads to Dover Motor Speedway on Saturday with a tightly bunched group of drivers atop the standings.
Austin Hill of Winston, Georgia has three victories early in the season, giving him a slim 4-point edge over two-race winner John Hunter Nemechek. Talking Rock, Georgia’s Chandler Smith (-19), Riley Herbst (-32) and defending race winner Josh Berry (-36) are currently the top-five drivers in the title run.
Three competitors – Berry, Justin Allgaier and Cole Custer – have hoisted Dover trophies before. The two-time winner Allgaier is the only multiple winner in this week’s field and his 12 top-10s ties him with Kyle Busch for most all-time. The veteran nearly collected a third trophy the last time the series visited the track – his No. 7 JRM Chevrolet leading a race high 67 of the 200 laps and finishing a slight .604-seconds behind Berry.
Custer also possesses a strong resume at Dover with top-10 finishes in five of his six Xfinity Series starts at the track. He has a pair of top-10s in four NASCAR Cup Series starts as well.
Plus, Custer has extra incentive this weekend having collected last week’s $100,000 Dash 4 Cash prize at Talladega Superspeedway and hoping to make it two-in-a-row. Saturday marks the final installment of the Dash 4 Cash incentive program from Xfinity with another $100,000 check ready to be paid to the top finisher among Custer, last week’s race winner Jeb Burton, Sheldon Creed and Parker Kligerman.
They all bring strong cases to the contest this week after last Saturday’s dramatic Talladega race, where Burton earned his second career victory and Creed finished runner-up. Not only is this Custer’s return to Xfinity Series competition at Dover, but it will mark the first Dover Xfinity race for Kligerman since 2013. He does have a top-10 in three previous series starts.
After winning three of the first five races, Hill has only one top-10 (ninth place at Richmond) in the four races since. His closest challenger in the championship – Nemechek – has three top-10s in six previous Dover starts but has finished 32nd and 37th in his last two races there.
NASCAR Weekend Preview
NASCAR Cup Series
Next Race: Würth 400
The Place: Dover Motor Speedway – Dover, DE
The Date: Sunday, April 30
The Time: 2 p.m. ET
The Purse: $7,629,649
TV: FS1, 1 p.m. ET
Radio: PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Distance: 400 miles (400 laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 120), Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 250), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 400)
NASCAR Xfinity Series
Next Race: A-GAME 200
The Place: Dover Motor Speedway – Dover, DE
The Date: Saturday, April 29
The Time: 1:30 p.m. ET
The Purse: $1,361,382
TV: FS1, 12:30 p.m. ET
Radio: PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Distance: 200 miles (200 Laps); Stage 1 (Ends on Lap 45), Stage 2 (Ends on Lap 90), Final Stage (Ends on Lap 200)
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