Dover NASCAR rain creates hurdles and mystery ahead of Sunday race

The first lap any driver takes on the new NASCAR Cup Series tire combination at Dover Motor Speedway will be the first lap of the race on Sunday.

This is because both practice and qualifying were rained out. Another byproduct of the Saturday storm is that the ‘qualifying metric’ in place for such a scenario resulted in Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe on the front row.

That metric is currently comprised of 70 percent the previous race’s finish and 30 percent the current owner standings.

This works for Elliott because this is his first pole of the season amidst a campaign where he has just the 16th best starting average through 20 races.

“It’s definitely a different pole than normal,” Elliott said. “Saturday has definitely not been a strong suit, so we had to blaze a little different trail to get a pole. At the end of the day, it’s a testament of hard work throughout the year and a good stretch of races, right? It earns you the metric that puts you in a position if it were to rain.

“It’s a little different vibe but we’ll take it. We’ll try to take advantage of that first pit stall tomorrow. It’s always a big deal. It’s not something we have a whole bunch, so we’d like to get in the habit of getting that more often. Hopefully, we’ll have a good day.”

Again, this is also the first race using this specific tire combination with the D-5240 left sides and D-5260 right sides.

Elliott is well aware of the mystery before all involved come Sunday afternoon.

“At the moment, I don’t really know because I haven’t spent any time on it,” Elliott said. “I think all we can really do at this point is just try and dissect any similarities that the tire this weekend might have to a change that we’ve maybe already seen throughout the year.

“Really just make your best guess off of the information that you have in front of you with that. I feel like that stuff is always a little bit of an educated guess when you’re coming to these places for the first time.

“Hopefully, we hit that right and can have a good day and get going. I’m sure the track being fresh like it is right now and the Xfinity drivers fixing to go run — I’m not sure if we’re expecting any more rain overnight or not, but hopefully there’ll be some rubber down before we start tomorrow. I think that would certainly help concerns as the race gets going, but we’ll see. Last year, we were cording tires within just a handful of laps in practice. It could be an interesting day. We’ll find out.”

Anticipating the rain, and recognizing the impropriety that could follow if only half the field were able to get time on the new tires, NASCAR proactively adjusted the practice format and was set to allow everyone to practice at the same time.

No split groups.

It took a while for Kyle Busch, a three-time winner at The Monster Mile, to figure out why but it’s all a moot point now anyway.

“I must be really stupid because I was scratching my head on why,” Busch said. “What are we doing? But then I thought — well if it rains, which I guess we’re worried about some sort of weather that’s not here, that one group gets practice and the other doesn’t. So if the track is just open, everybody can go. So if you miss out, you miss out. It’s your own fault. So I think that’s really the only reason why it happened that way.”

The goal of this tire combination is best explained by Tyler Reddick.

“The trend with that has been softer tires that lay more rubber – something that goes along with that is marbling outside of the racing lane, but typically when there is more rubber going down on the race track, it is presenting us with more options on the racing surface, especially a place like this,” Reddick said. “Even last year, when we ran here, it was laying so much rubber down on the track that it was forcing you, late in the runs, to move around to get away from the rubber build up. I feel like we were having so much of it on corner exit, it reminds me of Martinsville. That would be exciting. That would be good.

“Certainly, would force you to move around off the bottom if the rubber really builds up like that again, and quite possibly could do more of that. Excited to see what that means here. Typically, I felt like, this race track – the more sun, the more heat it has, all of the stuff we talked about just now increases. I think the more that happens, the wider the surface gets, the more options we have as drivers as the tires wear out.”

Joey Logano says ‘you never know, you never know,’ until laps get turned.

“There are a lot of theories,” Logano said. “You could expect it to go one way and then it goes the other way. You don’t know til you get out there. There are a lot of times that we go out there and try to predict it and it doesn’t play out the way we anticipated.”

Ryan Preece said he doesn’t know what to expect.

“I would suspect, because everything Goodyear has done this year has been super helpful, from a driver standpoint,” said the RFK Racing driver. “I applaud them for the changes and pushing that continued development.

“It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, racing or otherwise, if you’re not continuing to move the needle on further development, you fall behind. And Goodyear, they are continuing to move that needle and make it better and better every week.”

The biggest concern, obviously, is that without data from practice that crew chiefs could get overly aggressive with their tire set-ups and there could be failures early in the race.

What say you, Elliott?

“I mean, it’s certainly a concern, I think, as you start the race,” Elliott said. “When you just have unknowns with the tire, I think kind of to expand on some of the earlier questions — yes, I think that there’s definitely an element of concern and just the fact that you don’t have those answers, right? And I think as a race team, you always want to try to have all the answers you can get in front of you before you start the race.

“Unfortunately, this is just a circumstance where we’re just simply not going to have that before tomorrow. So it’ll be a little bit of a trial-and-error run throughout the race, and hopefully the error is not too large that we can’t overcome if there is one. Be smart, take advantage of that first pit stall, try to go to work and put together a full race.”

Another concern for Elliott is that the past 24 pole winners have not won at Dover.

“Thanks a lot… I really appreciate that,” Elliott said with a laugh when told.

“I mean, no. I guess just hope it’s not 25. That’s about all I can do right now. We’ll try to try to break the streak.”

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