After an eventful weekend at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend, NASCAR returns to Dover Motor Speedway for the Wurth 400! This course is an even one mile long and is particularly friendly to the big three teams in NASCAR. Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Stewart-Haas Racing have dominated this course recently. The latest winner? Hendrick’s own Chase Elliott. Last season the top-10 had six racers representing the three teams above. Although now five that Kyle Busch has left and now races under Richard Childress Racing.
Unfortunately for Hendrick Motorsports, Alex Bowman will miss this race after suffering a fractured vertebra earlier this week. Josh Berry steps into his shoes and will have something to prove at one of the team’s favorite tracks around. The top three teams have won four straight at this track, so they’ll be favorites here. But I’ll throw a curveball in there or two if I can. Here are five drivers I’m looking at this weekend!
#1 Ross Chastain
The first racer on the list is our oddball of the week. Representing Trackhouse Racing, Chastain has only raced Dover twice in his career. But last year he had a solid chance of winning it all starting seventh and finishing third. Melon Man should be in the conversation through the entirety of the race pending any huge mistakes or mishaps. Chastain tends to get involved in messy ways and take the attention at one point or the other. He could very well try something to dethrone the big three here in Delaware.
#4 Kevin Harvick
Harvick has historically been fantastic at this track. In 42 races he’s got three wins and 23 top-10 finishes. In his retirement season, I bet you he’s itching for a big win. Representing Stewart-Haas, this team needs a victory and could very well dethrone Hendrick’s recent win streak at Dover Motor Speedway. The 42-year-old should be at the front of the leaderboard all race long and battling for the win at the end of it.
#9 Chase Elliott & #24 William Byron
I combine the Hendrick drivers because I want to leave some room for others later, but Byron and Elliott will be the two racers I’m looking at in this one. As we said, Elliott won the race at Dover Motor Speedway last season. It’s also worth noting that Byron has two wins on the season already and is probably hungry to rack up another. Byron also finished top five at the track in 2021. It goes without saying the Hendrick drivers will be at the top of the leaderboard by the end of the race pending an accident.
#14 Chase Briscoe
Briscoe is the next Stewart-Haas driver that I considered for this race. Only being featured on this track twice, he does have a top-10. But furthermore, he’s been running hard all season long. He shined especially bright last week starting and finishing fourth at Talladega. He’s got three top-five finishes this season and has an average finish of 15th. His boss, Tony Stewart, was particularly good at Dover himself. Scoring three wins in 11 top-five finishes. Maybe he can continue the tradition and get his second career victory in the Cup Series.
#54 Ty Gibbs
I think Ty Gibbs could be an interesting driver at Dover. It’ll be his first run at it, but his team has had great success in the past with Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr, Denny Hamlin, and Kyle Busch all having great success during their tenure with Joe Gibbs Racing. His rookie campaign hasn’t been fantastic to this point. But he’s got four top-10 finishes and has an average finish inside the top 20 at 17.7. Gibbs could prove to be a driver worth following the rest of the way with a big win at Dover.
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