dover`s - Delaware Online

R A C E
THE TRACK
DOVER’S
Dover International
Speedway
• Opened with the inaugural
running of the Mason-Dixon 300
on July 6, 1969.
• The course is the fastest onemile oval race track in the world
• A concrete track (the track was
asphalt from 1969 through
1994) makes Dover one of only
two completely concrete tracks
on the NASCAR Sprint Cup
Series.
• Owner and operator:
Dover Motorsports, Inc.
• Architect: Melvin Joseph
W E E K E N D
‘MONSTER’
MILE
Delaware Stadium
in Newark
BANKING: 24° turns
SIZE
BLEACHERS
THE ‘ROLLER COASTER’
COURSE IS THE FASTEST
ONE-MILE OVAL RACE TRACK
IN THE WORLD
BANKING: 9° straightaways
SURFACE: concrete
SAFETY APRON & PIT ROAD
SURFACE: Asphalt
By Brad Myers
The News Journal
PIT ROW: 1,580 feet long, 47 feet wide
PIT POSITIONS: 43 with water and electric
MONSTER
BRIDGE
STRAIGHTAWAYS: 1,067 feet
BANKING: 24° turns
BANKING
ON IT
CAPACITY: 113,000 race fans
Miles holds a
full-size, retired
stock car in his
right hand.
Dover
International
Speedway track
historian George
Keller shows the
24-degree track
bank, third steepest in NASCAR.
24°
GARY EMEIGH/
THE NEWS JOURNAL
The red eyes
of the
Monster light
up at night.
9°
The bank angles are 24-degrees
on the curves and 9-degrees
on the straighaways
MILES THE MONSTER
The Monster Monument, one of
the largest fiberglass structures in
the country, stands at 46-feet tall
and depicts Dover’s signature
icon, Miles the Monster.
Plaques honor
the drivers
with the most
success at
Dover.
MONSTER ANGLES
It’s easy to remember a great roller coaster. As soon as it stops,
you want to ride it again.
Dover International Speedway has one of the greatest thrill rides
in the world, but it’s not open to the public. Only the 43 drivers who
make the field for the twice-a-year NASCAR Sprint Cup races get to
fully experience the Monster Mile.
And they get to ride it 400 times in about three hours.
“A lot of the drivers compare it to a roller coaster,” said Tony Gibson, crew chief for Danica Patrick, the only female driver on the circuit. “You fall into the corners, and you jump out of the corners.”
The Monster Mile will be at full tilt Sept. 26-28 as NASCAR’s best
return for the AAA 400, the third race in the 10-event Chase for the
Sprint Cup that determines stock-car racing’s season-long champion.
Gibson has been coming to Dover since the 1980s, preparing cars for
some of the biggest names in the sport – Alan Kulwicki, Bill Elliott,
Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin. He said the key to
victory is keeping your car low in the one-mile oval’s sweeping corners, which are banked at 24 degrees, among the steepest in
NASCAR.
“You want to run around the bottom, because it’s the shortest way
around,” Gibson said. “The driver who can get hooked up around the
bottom and carry that corner speed, that’s what you’re looking for.
Usually one or two guys will be on the bottom there and hook it up,
and those are the guys who are usually fighting for the win.”
But that is easier said than done, because the cars plunge into
those turns at 170 mph. As the 400-lap race goes on, many of the cars
begin to drift upward in the corners, losing valuable time. The extreme gravitational forces the corners place on the cars takes a
toll. Tires are the first thing to wear, so they are changed during
almost every pit stop. But other parts can fail, too.
It has been that way since July 6, 1969, when Richard Petty
won the Mason-Dixon 300, the first NASCAR race at what was
then known as Dover Downs. Denis McGlynn, CEO of Dover
Motorsports Inc., coined the Monster Mile nickname in the
mid-1970s.
“The track was becoming known as a monster, one that
was very tough on drivers and tough on equipment,” said
Gary Camp, the speedway’s director of communications.
“Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for the driver to have a relief driver because they couldn’t finish the whole race. Or
they would get out of the car at the end of 500 miles and collapse and need oxygen.”
The asphalt surface was replaced with concrete in 1995, and
Sprint Cup races were shortened to 400 miles in 1997. But
Dover remains one of the most difficult of NASCAR’s 23 tracks.
Gibson said the drivers feel it in their neck, shoulders and ribs.
And that signature plunge into and spring out of each corner
stresses the car at different points, making handling difficult.
“There is so much vertical and lateral load, it’s incredible,” Gibson said. “When you’re going down the straightaway and you go into
the corner it drops off, so the car is unloading and then it loads back
up.
“That’s the big issue at Dover. It’s not a perfectly loaded racetrack all the way around. It unloads and loads the car at different
points, and that makes it a challenge.”
It’s a roller coaster.
The turns at Dover International Speedway are banked at 24
degrees, among the steepest in NASCAR. But unlike most other
THE NEWS JOURNAL/GARY
tracks, the straightaways are banked too, at 9 degrees. Tony Gibson, crew
EMEIGH
chief for Sprint Cup driver Danica Patrick, said that often leads to big pileups if there
is an accident. “Anything that happens, you go to the bottom,” Gibson said. “It’s what we call a self-cleaning racetrack,
because things always clear to the bottom. You slide into that bottom lane, and that’s right in the middle of traffic. There’s
Contact Brad Myers at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter
no way to miss anybody.”
@BradMyersTNJ
– Brad Myers
DESIGN AND GRAPHICS BY DAN GARROW/THE NEWS JOURNAL
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