Drivers to watch in NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover

NASCAR heads to Dover Motor Speedway this weekend for the Next Gen’s car first race at the 1-mile banked concrete track.

Will Hendrick Motorsports be as dominant as was it was last season, sweeping the top four spots and leading most of the race? Will Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain become the first driver to win three races this season and follow his Talladega win with another visit to Victory Lane?

Here’s a look at who could be in the mix Sunday (3 p.m. ET on FS1) at Dover:

It has been an up-and-down season for Joe Gibbs Racing. Truex embodies that. He’s had a four-race stretch where he had three finishes outside the top 10, and he’s had a three-race stretch of top-10 finishes.

Dover is one of his better tracks. He has three wins there. He’s scored nine top 10s in the last 11 races on the 1-mile concrete track. Truex also has led laps in nine of the last 13 Dover races.

It’s good to be in a Hendrick Motorsports car at Dover. Hendrick drivers went 1-2-3-4 last year. Larson finished second to Alex Bowman after leading 263 of the 400 laps. The key moment came when Bowman beat Larson off pit road and went on to lead the final 97 laps last May.

Larson has led at least 85 laps in five of his last nine Dover starts. He has 10 top 10s in his last 12 races at the track. He’s finished in the top 10 in seven of his 13 career starts.

Last year’s winner has four top fives in the last five Dover races. The Hendrick cars are again strong this season, having won four of the first 10 races. Bowman has five top 10s in the last six races this season. Since his win at Las Vegas in the third race of the year, Bowman has not finished worse than 14th in any event.

AJ Allmendinger said on this week’s NASCAR on NBC Podcast that he views