The NASCAR summer-fest takes its traveling tour up North for the first time this season after criss-crossing the country from the west to southeast several times already in this young season. For almost the entire month of May, the drivers have had the luxury of sleeping in their own bed as all the races have been near their homes, beginning with Darlington and concluding with the two weeks of races in Charlotte.
The northeast tour begins this weekend as all three major NASCAR series race on the one mile high banked concrete oval of Dover, Delaware, otherwise known as the Monster Mile. The track is unique to itself and doesn’t resemble another, first because of the concrete, and second because of the high banking. Over the last couple of years, crew chiefs have brought their Bristol chassis’ to Dover because of the similarities in steep banking and because of the recent multi-grooves run at Bristol now after the restructuring, or dismantling of the famed half mile track.
If we use the comparison from two tracks from 2008, we see that one driver, Matt Kenseth, finished in the Top 10 in all four races and six other drivers finished in the Top 10 in three of the four races.
One of the drivers that doesn’t show up on the list is this week’s favorite, Las Vegan Kyle Busch, who won this Dover race last season, but failed to get a top 10 in any of the other three races. Part of the lack of success for Busch on this track has to do with hard charging nature and never being able to settle down and take what the track gives him when he may have a car that is only capable of getting a 12th. It’s almost like an all or nothing deal for Kyle.
That style and nature succeeded for Kyle Busch in this years Bristol race that saw him dominate and lead the most laps en route to the win. In Dover races of the past, Kyle has been spectacular mixed in with two 40th or worse finishes. In eight career Dover starts, he has five Top 5 finishes. His run there last season is the perfect example of the extreme high’s and lows of Busch. After winning in the spring, he finished dead last in the fall, a race in the chase that sent him to the bottom of the chase points and doomed his chances despite still having eight races remaining.
The three races this weekend at Dover also give Busch another chance to complete the trifecta, or treble, which is winning all three series races in a weekend. No one has ever accomplished the feat, but Busch has won two of the three on three separate occasions. This season at California Busch became the first driver to ever win two major series races on the same day when he won the truck race early and came back a few hours later to win the Nationwide race. He fell short in the Cup race with a third place finish. In all, Busch has 50 career NASCAR wins covering all three major series, including eight this season.
The career active leader in average finish position is Carl Edwards with a 7.7 clip in ninestarts. Since the fall of 2006, Edwards has five straight finishes of getting either a first, second, or third. Edwards, nicknamed Concrete Carl because of his prowess on the surface in all series, took the fall Dover Cup race of 2007.
The similarities between Bristol and Dover success is no more apparent than Edwards who last year won at Bristol and then had a second and third at Dover. If the trend continues between the two tracks, Edwards could be in trouble because he was a non-factor at Bristol for the first time in two seasons. All isn’t well with the No. 99 Roush team, but if anything can get him going, it’s likely to be the concrete of Dover.
Jimmie Johnson tied his best finish ever at Bristol this season after taking some serious lumps in his career on the track. Perhaps the extreme makeover of the track had something to do with his recent success there, and perhaps making the track run more like Dover was right up Johnson’s alley. Johnson finished in the Top 10 in both Dover races last season and has three career wins on the concrete oval, including sweeping the season in his rookie year of 2002. Only Ryan Newman and Edwards have a better career average finish at Dover than Johnson with his 11.1 average. Johnson’s last win there came in the fall of 2005; since then he’s had only one Top 5.
Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin are the tracks active leaders in wins with four. Martin’s last win there came in 2004 while Gordon’s was in 2001. The two teammates and elder statesmen of the series are showing all the youngsters how it’s done. Both are currently in line for making the chase for the championship with Gordon leading everyone in points. Gordon is one of the six drivers to finish in the Top 10 in three of the four Bristol and Dover races last season. Gordon’s fifth and seventh last season at Dover was his best season there since 2002. At Bristol this season, Gordon didn’t have a great car but was able to bring it in with a great fourth place finish. Expect similar results this week.
Ryan Newman began his upward swing on his season at Bristol with a seventh after struggling to barely qualify for races in the first few races of 2009. Newman, once wondering if he’d made the right choice to go with Tony Stewart in this make shift start-up team, now is firmly entrenched with points , sitting in seventh, and is on his way to the Chase in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent NASCAR history. They have gone from Junk to now competing for wins.
Newman has an average finish of 10.5 at Dover over his 14 career starts. From 2003 to 2004, Newman won three of the four races there and has always had a knack for the concrete. Look for Newman to get back to success at Dover after a mediocre 2008 there with Penske.
Greg Biffle has 13 career Dover starts and has an 11.2 average finish position. He won the fall Dover race last season giving him two career wins there. He is currently on a streak there that has seen him finish no worse than eighth in his last six races. Like Edwards, Biffle has finished first, second, or third in his last three races there. At Bristol this year, Biffle had engine problems that relegated him to a 39th. If going back to 2008, Biffle is one of the six drivers to finish in the Top 10 in three of the four races at Dover and Bristol combined.
Congratulations go out to David Reutimann for getting his first Cup win at Charlotte last week, with an assist from Mother Nature. The race dragged on for two days of rain until NASCAR finally said enough is enough and called the race that had barely passed the halfway point. For bettors, there weren’t many takers on Reutimann at 75/1 and higher, therefore many of the books did very well in their odds to win pools. The books also did well in driver matchups because of the rain and the sequence of pitting that occurred just before the final Red Flag came. Many of the top cars bet on for this race were shuffled back allowing some of the underdogs to get there. One thing you can’t handicap, and that is the weather. Good luck this week and let’s hope that we have some nice Delaware weather for this weekend.
Top 5 Dover Finish Prediction
1) #18 Kyle Busch (5/1)
2) #16 Greg Biffle (12/1)
3) #39 Ryan Newman (18/1)
4) #48 Jimmie Johnson (6/1)
5) #17 Matt Kenseth (15/1)
