Dover Motor Speedway has changed quite a bit over the years.
When I first watched NASCAR, Dover races were 500 miles long and filled with wrecks. For example, the two Dover races in 1993 averaged over four hours and 51 minutes.
Sunday’s race wasn’t nearly that long at three hours and 20 minutes. However, it wasn’t particularly all that exciting to watch.
There were only 12 lead changes Sunday (April 28) and passing in general was pretty difficult if you weren’t in a Hendrick Motorsports car. I’m only saying that because Chase Elliott managed to charge from 29th on the grid to finish fifth. Kyle Larson almost won after starting outside of the top 20.
Everyone else seemed to struggle.
Was it any different than last year’s race? Not really. The average passes per green flag lap were nearly identical to last year. There were more passes Sunday, but that’s only because there were four fewer laps under yellow this year. I just don’t recall the discussion about air blocking that we’ve seen over the past couple of days.
What I do remember is that tires were a big problem last year with numerous issues.
Unless your name is Brad Keselowski, that wasn’t much of a problem Sunday. Keselowski had multiple unwound tires and smacked the wall because of it. Viewers got a good look at the problematic tires when it happened. Had the sun not come out Sunday, it might have been a very different story.
If you look at the box score of the race, you’ll see that Ryan Preece dropped out of the race due to “Safety.”
That is a very rare reason to DNF and FOX Sports 1 was on it from the start, partially by luck. The broadcast had an in-car camera in Preece’s car and noted smoke filling the car on lap 22. I feel like if it didn’t have the camera in there, we might not have ever known about it to the degree that we did. The thought at first was that rubber was getting inside of the rockers again. You can imagine what I was thinking there since we’ve seen that a number of times since the Next Gen car debuted.
Ultimately, it was determined that rubber had melted the door foam, causing the smoke. While this was not broached on the broadcast, the situation will likely lead to another redesign in order to seal off the foam from the elements. It’s one thing to wreck, but it’s a whole different thing if you’ve done nothing and it starts burning. Left unsaid on the broadcast was what the burning of the foam…
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