iNSIDE SCOOP: Rolling On

From the metropolis that is Charlotte Motor Speedway to the white cliffs of Dover, NASCAR moves on from its late-spring home games to the meat of the summer schedule.

After two weeks of sleeping at home and short commutes to the track, the circus has packed up the Big Top—minus the camera system, of course—and is headed out on the tide of time to the Northeast and Midwest.

Once Charlotte is over, it’s a long slog to the next off-week at the end of July. 

Dover is a great place to see a race. The banks are high, the concrete can be a pain in the rear bumper and pit road is still one of the more difficult in the sport, but the racing is like a 400-lap trophy dash. A classic point-and-shoot track of the old Winchester/Salem/I-70 mold, Dover is all about getting back to the gas. 

If you can’t get back to the gas, you lose momentum rocketing down the short straightaways, which happen to be banked higher than the corners at Martinsville. If you get run over, which is fairly common at Dover, you tend to crash in two directions, inside and outside. That really makes the fab shop happy, too.

When they ran Indy Cars at Dover a few years ago, the double-whammy produced some vicious crash footage—and tons of carbon fiber toothpicks. 

It is the very definition of a momentum track, too. Charge to Turn 1, back off, roll through the corner, get back to the gas, do it all over into Turn 3. 

Pocono, up next in the Magical Mystery Tour of the northeast, is as flat as Dover is bowl-like, and it is driven somewhat like a road course. Really. Banked Turn 1 leads onto the Long Pond straight, which funnels to the Tunnel Turn. The Tunnel Turn is a tricky bit of road that requires…negotiation to get through. Turn 3 is a flat sweeper that leads onto the massive front straight, and if you don’t get off Turn 3 well, you might as well tool around in the back and wait for attrition.

The front straight at Pocono most closely resembles Runway 36R at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and you make tons of speed there, provided you get off Turn 3.

In short, they’re almost polar opposites from each other and neither one even remotely resembles Charlotte, which is good. Too many quad-ovals in a row makes for overkill. 

We’re about to embark on a ride through the summer that takes us from Delaware to Pennsylvania to Michigan and points south and west, ending in July at Indianapolis. 

It’s going to be a hot time, I’m sure.