The Cup Series will compete this week at Dover International Speedway. This is an important race for the “Monster Mile.” I talk to a friend who works for NASCAR and he told me that NASCAR is going to look closely this week to see how the Gen-7 car performs at the 1-mile, high-banked track. The attendance and TV ratings for the races at Dover have been down. If the Gen-7 car cannot put on a good show at the Monster Mile, it could be eliminated from the schedule. NASCAR already took away one race from Dover and they eliminated races from Pocono and New Hampshire. The Gen-7 car has been great this year, so hopefully we will have some competitive racing Sunday so the Northeast does not lose another race on the schedule.
DOVER RACE SCHEDULE
SATURDAY, APRIL 29th
10:30 AM -12:30 PM CUP SERIES PRACTICE /QUALIFYING (FS1)
SUNDAY, APRIL 30TH
3 PM ET CUP SERIES RACE (FS1)
DRIVER RANKINGS FOR DOVER
The NASCAR Cup Series has competed in 10 races this year but that does not mean there is a lot of data to use for the race at Dover. The Cup Series competed at three Superspeedways (Daytona, Atlanta and Talladega), three flat tracks (Phoenix, Richmond and Martinsville), two Intermediate Tracks (Auto Club and Las Vegas), a Road Course (COTA) and a race on dirt (Bristol).
Dover is a one-mile, high-banked intermediate track. It would have been nice if we had the data from Bristol to use for this race, but the dirt race will not translate into speed at the Monster Mile. I will be using the data from the races at Phoenix, Richmond and Las Vegas for the Driver Ratings this week. They are intermediate tracks which used the same horsepower package as the race this week at Dover. The banking is significantly different, but the teams who ran well in those races should have a good setup for the race Sunday. I also used the data from the last five races at Dover (2019 -2021). Dover is a rhythm track and some drivers are just better than others at turning fast laps at the Monster Mile.
Here are my Driver Rankings for the DuraMAX Drydene 400…
| Driver |
| 1. Kyle Larson |
| 2. Chase Elliott |
| 3. William Byron |
| 4. Alex Bowman |
| 5. Martin Truex Jr. |
| 6. Kevin Harvick |
| 7. Kyle Busch |
| 8. Ryan Blaney |
| 9. Joey Logano |
| 10. Ross Chastain |
| 11. Denny Hamlin |
| 12. Tyler Reddick |
| 13. Austin Dillon |
| 14. Aric Almirola |
| 15. Brad Keselowski |
| 16. Austin CIndric |
| 17. Daniel Suarez |
| 18. Kurt Busch |
| 19. Cole Custer |
| 20. Christopher Bell |
| 21. Chris Buescher |
| 22. Erik Jones |
| 23. Chase Briscoe |
| 24. AJ Allmendinger |
| 25. Bubba Wallace |
| 26. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. |
| 27. Ty Dillon |
| 28. Michael McDowell |
| 29. Justin Haley |
| 30. Harrison Burton |
| 31. Todd Gilliland |
| 32. Corey LaJoie |
| 33. Ryan Preece |
| 34. Cody Ware |
| 35. B.J. McLeod |
| 36. Josh Bilicki |
* These rankings will be updated Saturday after qualifying
Good Luck This Week!
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