Jimmie Johnson gets a double shot this weekend—a double shot at securing a berth in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff at his best race track.
Johnson has won 11 times in 36 starts at Dover International Speedway—a remarkable winning percentage of 30.6. With the Monster Mile hosting a Cup doubleheader on Saturday and Sunday, the seven-time series champion will have two opportunities to muscle his way into the postseason.
The first race in the doubleheader is the Drydene 311 (4 p.m. ET Saturday on NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The second leg of the doubleheader follows on Sunday at 4 p.m., to be carried by the same broadcast partners.
Dover is the track that gave Johnson his last Cup victory on June 4, 2017. Since then, through two crew chief changes, Johnson has competed in 117 races without taking the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to Victory Lane.
“We’re very excited for this weekend at Dover,” said Johnson, who is 15th in the Cup standings, 25 points below the Playoff cut line after Sunday’s fourth-place finish at the Daytona Road Course. “It’s hands-down my favorite track…
“Performance-wise, last weekend at the Daytona Road Course, we had a solid day. We needed that. Because of our fourth-place finish, we’ll be starting sixth Saturday at Dover, which is really an advantage to where we have been starting lately.
“With the random draw and the way track position has been working out, I feel like we have had things stacked against us for a while. This will be a good advantage for us, and we just have to go out there and get it done.”
The driver immediately ahead of Johnson in the race for a Playoff spot is his own teammate, William Byron. In four starts at the Monster Mile, Byron has a best finish of eighth in last year’s spring race. That’s the only Dover event in which he has finished on the lead lap.
“Even though it’s concrete, Dover’s surface changes a lot during the race,” Byron said of the high-banked, high-speed one-mile track. “It’s really temperamental and holds a lot of rubber. When it does that, it widens the race track out.
“It’s a tough track to get ahold of for that reason. You have to prepare for when the rubber lays down and have your car handling how it needs to once that happens. You have to stay on top of those things. I feel like our guys have done a good job in preparing, and we’ll see what we have when we unload.”
Since Johnson’s last win at Dover, five different drivers have won the five most recent races there: Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Larson. Of that quintet, Busch is in the direst need of a victory to counteract the cascade of ill-fortune that has beset the defense of his championship.
Busch is winless this year, and his drought has reached 23 races, the most to start a season since his rookie year in 2005, when Busch won at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., in his 25th start.
Source: Reid Spencer | NASCAR Wire Service
