NASCAR viewer’s guide: Dover Motor Speedway

Ten races into the Cup season, Chase Elliott, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. are among the drivers who have yet to win this year.

Heading to Dover Motor Speedway for Sunday’s race (3 p.m. ET on FS1) might be what Elliott, Harvick or Truex need. All three have won at the 1-mile track recently.

Truex has three wins at this track, tied for his most Cup wins anywhere. Elliott has eight top-five finishes, including a win, in 11 Dover starts. Harvick, winless in his last 53 races, has three Dover victories. He’s placed sixth or better in the last seven races there.

Here are some of the key storylines this weekend at Dover:

Hendrick Motorsports dominated last year’s race, finishing 1-2-3-4 and leading 382 of the 400 laps. Alex Bowman won and was followed by teammates Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and William Byron. 

The race marked the third consecutive top-three finish for Larson at Dover. His average finish of seventh at Dover is the best at the track among drivers who have made two or more Cup starts there.

Bowman has finished in the top five in four of the last five Dover races.

Elliott is winless in his last 26 Cup races, but his seven top 10s through the first 10 races of the season are the most he’s had at this point in any year. He has placed in the top 10 in each of the last three races this season.

Byron has two wins this year. He and Ross Chastain are the only drivers to win multiple Cup races this season.

Could Sunday see the seventh consecutive different winner at Dover? The last six Dover winners have been Alex Bowman, Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr. and Chase Elliott. This is the longest stretch of different winners at Dover since there were nine in a row from 2004-08.

Richard