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Not cursing Dover Monster Mile is tough -- but it can be done right
OK. The restrictor plates are over with. It’s good they are over with because nobody liked them. Nobody. Maybe Jeff Burton liked them since he led all 300 laps, but he was the only one who came close. Not even NASCAR liked them. I think they did what they had to do and they made a hard decision, and I won’t ever question that. But I don’t think they wanted restrictor plates on the cars at New Hampshire any more than anybody else did. They just did what they had to do. The plates are gone for awhile now -- at least, until we get to Talladega -- and now it’s on to Dover. What’s the key at Dover? Handing, handling, handling. And a pretty good engine. Those are the keys to Dover. You just absolutely have to have a car that really handles well. Those steep banks, especially as high as they are, put a premium on how your car handles. Those banks are really something. Used to be they let the fans down there after the race, and they’d start doing the ‘cooler races.’ That’s when they’d sit on their cooler and slide down the banks, from the wall to the apron. You’d see guys doing that where it’s steepest down there in the first corner or something, and they’d look like they were doing 50 miles an hour by the time they go to the apron. So that tells you how steep those things are. It seems like you’re turning left for most of that track, so you have to be able to stay as low as you can. You have to have a motor that’s going to get you down the straights and that’s going to pull off those corners but if your car isn’t handling well, you’re a dead duck. A car handling pretty good at Dover can mean you’re going to have a pretty good day, assuming you get through any problems that happen. When your car isn’t handling good at Dover, it’s like riding in one of those red wagons for little kids down the side of a mountain. All you can do is hold on tight and hope that it’s over soon. Dover can be one of those places where you race the track, but you’re not always racing the track. To get a good rhythm going, you have to race the track. But if you’re struggling a little and know the leaders are coming up on you, that changes everything. You’re racing for your life then. Dover can fool you. Experience usually wins out at Dover because of that. If you just walked in the place and looked around, you’d think you might have a pretty good idea of how to get around it -- and you’d probably be wrong. That place is simply one mean oval. That ‘Monster Mile’ name they put on the place, hey, run about 100 laps there and you’ll know where it came from. Run 200 laps and you will really know where it came from. About lap 300, you figure whoever came up with that nickname wasn’t strong enough with what they were saying. You don’t just go hard and slam it left. You go uphill and downhill too. That throws in an entirely different twist to the whole deal. Everything happens pretty quickly, especially in the corners, and you run some really fast laps time-wise, like at a short track. Things happen really fast at Dover, and you have to be ready for that. A guy getting into trouble in the middle of the second turn while you’re in the middle of the first is going to be a problem. The way the track is banked, you know anybody spinning or hitting the wall is going to come down the banks - what you have to figure out is how fast they’re going to come down and when they’re going to start. You’d better figure it right, too, because if you’re off just a hair, you’re in the middle of something. You’d better hope the guy behind you and beside you figures it right, too, because if he is off just a hair, you’re right in the middle of something. I have no idea why, but Dover has been a pretty good track for me. In some ways, it’s suited for my driving style. I think a lot of it just boils down to the fact that I like racing there. I’ve usually been able to get around it pretty well, and that’s worked in my favor. You always like the tracks where you run well and you always run well at the tracks you like. You spend the day adjusting. That’s the case at a lot of tracks but it seems to be the case at Dover more than most other places. The teams that adjust the best are usually the ones you find running at the front of the pack most of the day. The driver has to be able to adjust all around the track too. The preferred line is usually pretty low in the corners but that’s where the slower cars go too, so you have to work your way around that, and work your way around without losing your rhythm. The crew has to adjust too, and be ready when the track changes or when the car changes. If you’re off just a little bit at Dover, you’re off a lot. It doesn’t take much. Then again, if your car is really right, you can do a lot of damage to the rest of the field. We’re pretty anxious to get this Mobil 1 Taurus to Dover. Dover has been pretty good to us over the past couple of years, and that’s something we think we can keep going. Jeremy Mayfield is on his third season driving the Mobil 1 Taurus for Penske-Kranekuss. His dairy appears every Monday on CNNSI.com.
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