NASCAR DFS: Dover Weekend Track Breakdown

We’re getting a double serving of the Monster Mile in one weekend for the Cup cars and they work to fill in the final missed race from the Covid-19 hiatus earlier in the year. Dover is called the Monster Mile because of how hard it is to tame for not only the drivers but their equipment as well.

The high-banked, concrete, one-mile oval is a very bumpy ride for driver and car alike and that can lead to mistakes being made with regularity that induces crashes or part malfunctions throughout the race. Typically the races here are 400 miles in length, or 400 laps around the 1-mile track, but this weekend both races will be 311 lap/miles in an effort to make things a tad easier and less demanding on the teams. That means there won’t be quite as many laps led and fastest laps to rack up but they will still be important and we could still very well see one car out front for more than a third of the race.

This week the cars will have the 750-horsepower, low-downforce package on the cars that are run at every short track, one-mile, and road course in a season which means there should be some more slipping and sliding through the corners than we typically see at the intermediate tracks. As for the tires this weekend, the left sides will be the same as what were run at Auto Club, Darlington, and Homestead this season but the right side tires are new for all three series and watch for those tires to be the ones that have issues throughout the race due to the load in the corners on them. This has been a track known to have several cautions a race and can from time-to-time have pile-up style crashes, though in recent races there have been fewer of those incidents and this tends to be a self-cleaning track of sorts as the banking pushes the cars down to the inside wall which can help keep crashes to a single-car most of the time.

Courtesy of FRCS

Typically over the last 10 races here, Toyota and Chevy have pretty evenly split the wins for the most part while Ford is bringing up the rear.

There have been 100 races run at Dover in its history and starting up front has typically been a recipe for success here, but there are a solid number of winners that have come from further back to win as well.

Programming Notes

With there being two races for the Cup series this weekend, this will be the only track breakdown to come out but the DFS Rankings, Projections, Playbook, and Example Lineups will all be redone following Saturday’s race for the new starting positions and prices.

Strategy Notes

Laps led will be important here as there are 311 laps in each race so having at least one laps led dominator in the lineup will be critical to cashing. For cash games PD can be more of a determinant of cashing than laps led as there have been an average of three drivers to post double-digit place differential in each of the last five races.

Core Drivers By Tier

Tier 1 - Martin Truex Jr

• Truex has been outstanding here with three top-fives in the last four races and an average finish of 5.5.

• His 115.3 average driver rating is second only to Kevin Harvick.

• Truex is at his home track and last year won after starting P13 but really from the back and led 170-plus laps.

Tier 2 - Austin Dillon (if he’s running)

• So Dillon is still questionable for this week with Covid but he’s hoping to race at Dover.

• The starting spot is too hard to look past because he missed last week and thus will be starting outside the top-30.

• Dillon has been solid at Dover with an average finish of 17.5 over the last four races here with three top-20 finishes.

Tier 3 - Cole Custer

• Custer has been very good here in the Xfinity level over the course of several races.

• He has two top-10 finishes in the four races with this package this year.

• The price is really intriguing for a very good place differential play.

Contrarian - Bubba Wallace

• Wallace doesn’t have the greatest history here with just one top-20 in the last four races with an average finish of 23.8.

• In the last nine points races he’s finished better than where he started three times, though last week was running P8 with a few laps to go until he got spun out.

• In the last four races this year in this package though, he’s posted a near 10 place differential mark.

Fade - Ryan Blaney

• Blaney hasn’t done well at Dover in the last several races as he has an average 21.3 finish.

• This year in four races in this package (not including last week) he has finished inside the top-20 just once.

• The price is steep for anticipated PD but he hasn’t proven he can do that and he’s on a bad streak of low finishes.

Last Four Dover Races

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Top-20 Drivers Over Last Eight Dover Races

Momentum

These show the stats for the last five races of this season prior to the current week’s race to show you who’s been hot and who’s been cold.

Drivers

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

Team

Finish Spot Ranges By Starting Spot Ranges

This table shows where the ranges of starting spots have finished regardless of driver in those spots over the last four Dover races. The left-hand column shows the starting spots in groups of five and the columns going across show the finish spots in groups of five up to outside the top-20.

Weekly Rankings

Race Hist, Recent Form, Track Hist, Type Hist are all ranked on average finish position over the last four races at the track, five races this season, eight races at this track, and similar races respectively. The Avg. Rating and Top-15 % columns are ranked on those categories in the last four races at this track. The L8 PD column ranks the position differential over the last eight races from best (most positive) to worst (most negative).

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4

DFS Value Averages

This replaces the DFS Scoring Averages table that had been here. Instead, we have the DFS Value figures instead. We have taken their points scored over the last two and five races on each site and averaged those out and then divided that average by their salary divided by 1,000.

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Tier 4