By Jeff Wackerlin, MRN.com | Friday, August 21, 2020
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DOVER DOUBLE: The Drydene Doubleheader weekend marks the third time this year that the Cup Series has raced at the same track on back-to-back days. Among the four races held on the weekends at Pocono Raceway and Michigan International Speedway, Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin have claimed the wins with Harvick sweeping Michigan. Along with Harvick and Hamlin, only Martin Truex Jr. has finished in the top 10 in each of the four races. Aric Almirola, Chase Elliott and Kyle Busch each have three top 10s.
“It’s going to be a tough weekend running two races in one weekend. That’s one of our more physical racetracks,” said Harvick, who has two Dover wins and is looking to clinch the regular season championship this weekend. “To go there and run both of those events back to back will be something you’ll have to be prepared for. It’s one of my favorite race tracks just because you have to drive the car really hard every lap in order to make good lap times.”
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BYRON STILL ON BUBBLE: With three races left in the regular season, William Byron remains the driver on the bubble to make the Playoffs. Byron currently holds a 25-point advantage over teammate Jimmie Johnson and is 35 points ahead of Erik Jones. Byron has a 13.5 average finish in four starts at Dover and will be looking to gain points on Matt DiBenedetto, who is 19 points ahead of him. Both Byron and Johnson have recorded average finishes of 9.2 this season with the 750 horsepower, low-downforce package.
“This is going to be a tough weekend, for sure,” Byron said. “We need to have good runs on both days. I’m hopeful that we can either get the win or create a good buffer in the point standings so we can go to Daytona and have a bit of a less stressful race. That would be the ideal situation.”
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JOHNSON’S MONSTER RECORD: Jimmie Johnson hopes to add to his record 11 wins at Dover in his final season as a full-time driver. His last victory – and the 83rd of his career – came in the 2017 spring race. Along with the win total, Johnson is the all-time Dover leader in laps led with 3,110. Johnson is coming off his first top five since Bristol in May with a fourth at the Daytona Road Course. He will start sixth on Saturday, which is his best starting position since Talladega (fourth) in June.
“We are very excited for this weekend at Dover,” Johnson said. “It’s hands down my favorite track. With the random draw and the way track position has been working out, I feel like we have had things stacked against us for a while. This will be a good advantage for us, and we just have to go out there and get it done.”
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THREE’S COMPANY FOR TRUEX: Martin Truex Jr. is a three-time Dover winner and comes into the weekend fresh off his fifth consecutive third-place finish on the season. One of those finishes came at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a race that used the 750-horsepower, low-downforce package. Truex has also claimed one of the wins with the rules package at Martinsville Speedway back in June. Last year in the two races at Dover, Truex finished first and second, respectively.
“Dover is one of my favorite tracks on the circuit,” Truex said. “I’ve been fortunate to have had success there throughout my career and it’s a place that just fits my driving style regardless what package we run there. I feel like it’s definitely a place we can have a shot to win both races, which is what we need as far as playoff points are concerned as we finish up the regular season.”
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ELLIOTT LEADS AT DOVER: Chase Elliott, last weekend’s winner at the Daytona Road Course, will start from the pole in Saturday’s race. Elliott, who leads all active drivers with an 8.6 average finish at Dover, led 145 laps from the pole en route to a fifth-place finish in last year’s spring race. Elliott’s six top fives in eight starts at the 1-mile track include a win in the 2018 fall race, but he says there’s still room for improvement.
“We’ve had some really good cars there and had some had some good runs,” Elliott said. “I feel like we need to be just a tick better. I feel like we’ve consistently been really strong, but not consistently just dominant. So I would like to see us kind of get over the hump and be just a tick better to really assert ourselves there more often, you know, in that first place instead of that third, fourth consistently.”
