This weekend, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series sits idle once again while the Cup and Xfinity series head off to Dover Motor Speedway to race alongside the ARCA Menards Series.
But it hasn’t been all that long that the Truck Series hasn’t run at Dover. The series made its debut at the one-mile oval in 2000, a race narrowly won by Kurt Busch during his rookie season. It was Busch’s third of four wins that year, though he lost the championship to Greg Biffle.
For the first 13 seasons on the Truck Series schedule, Dover featured a different winner every year. It wasn’t until 2013 that Kyle Busch became the first repeat victor at the track, and he’s since scored a total of three wins at Dover, a feat matched only by Johnny Sauter, who won three straight times from 2017 through 2019.
Fast forward to the 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic turned the sports world upside down, and Dover’s race, originally scheduled for the first weekend in May, was postponed to August. Zane Smith, a rookie at the time, scored the victory after leading 50 laps; it was his second win in three races (Michigan).
Thank you, @MonsterMile. pic.twitter.com/qsZnNl33bx
— Zane Smith (@zanesmith77) August 22, 2020
No one knew it at the time, but that’s the last time the Truck Series raced at Dover. In a deal that included giving up one of its races to Nashville Superspeedway, Dover now hosts just a single NASCAR weekend and the Trucks no longer race there.
It’s unfortunate that such a unique track has been removed from the Truck Series schedule, but at least to NASCAR’s credit, there’s only one track that has multiple races this year, a definite improvement over previous schedules.
Dover has long been known as the Monster Mile, a nickname given to the track by Denis McGlynn, who was the CEO of Dover Motorsports Inc. in the 1970s.
“The track was becoming known as a monster, one that was very tough on drivers and tough on equipment,” Gary Camp, the speedway’s…
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