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| We salute you, Dover. |
Bristol? Daytona? Indianapolis? Any track but Fontana?
How about some love for Dover? That beautiful concrete oval with its 24 degree banking has been overlooked by casual NASCAR fans for too long. Sure, it's located in the Chris Klein of states, but the Monster Mile has some of the best racing on the circuit.
Sunday's final laps were some of the best of the year. Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, Jamie McMurray, and Kevin Harvick all had realistic chances to win, thanks to the two and sometimes three racing grooves the track provides. With 30 laps to go, there was real race intensity at Dover—not gas mileage crap or manufactured green-white-checkered fluff.
With McMurray running up high, Harvick challenging on the low line, and Burton and Kenseth charging up from behind, there was plenty of room for passing and strategy on the track. Good clean living might be a sure path to suicidal boredom, but good clean racing is always the most exciting kind.
Short tracks like Bristol have plenty of bumpin', bangin', and dumpin'—and that's just in the line for the bathroom—but they rarely make for great racing since there's only one racing groove on the track. Superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega are always exciting since "the big one" can happen at time, but is it really fun to watch the fastest cars get taken out because Kyle Busch's diaper rash made him cranky?
Dover's high banks and fast concrete allow drivers to actually race. You can race hard without resorting to a bump-and-run. At one-groove Bristol, if you aren't significantly quicker than the leader in front of you, there is no way to pass in the last 10 laps other than with the bump-and-run.
So here's to you, Dover International Speedway—the only thing that doesn't suck in Delaware.