Around the Track: Dover's Monster Mile

Dover International Speedway -- site of Sunday's MBNA RacePoints 400 -- is one of two concrete-paved racetracks that Jeff Burton and the rest of the Nextel Cup Series' competitors face during the season.

Dover's one-mile oval's four turns are banked 24 degrees, with nine-degree banking on the straightaways, which are each 1,076 feet long, with the start/finish line at the midpoint of the frontstretch.

	JEFF BURTON •   Driver Page •   2005 Statistics Inside the Numbers Jeff Burton at Dover Year Start Finish 2004 22 4   33 33 2003 28 14   13 12 2002 33 3   30 6 2001 21 31   22 21 2000 14 34   21 36 1999 37 8   28 6 1998 37 2   27 38 1997 34 3   39 11 1996 18 9   29 40 1995 21 25   25 20 1994 26 33   6 37 Averages 25.6 19.4 • Races -- 22 • Wins -- 0 • Top 5s -- 4 • Top 10s -- 8

Dover is an exceptionally fast racetrack. For a mile-long racetrack, it generates a lot of speed -- it compares to Bristol.

It has a lot of the same characteristics as Bristol. You're in the throttle a lot of the time, there's a lot of banking and you really have to work hard to get your car to turn well.

That's what I go to Dover thinking: You have to make it turn well and keep it where you can run on the bottom.

You don't want to lock-in so you can only run on the bottom. You want to be able to run different grooves. If you can do those things, you can run really well there.

At Dover, like everywhere else, cars can tend to be tight or loose, but if you have to be one of the two, it'd probably be tight. Dover is one of those places that when you get loose, it's very difficult.

Too tight is a very bad thing. It hurts the right front tire and it's easy to blow right fronts there because it's so abusive on them. You really need to be neutral if you're going to have success there.

The bottom is the way to go in qualifying. Getting in fairly low is certainly better. You don't have to run right on the white line, but you need to be fairly close to the bottom.

The first and second lap at Dover is really more about how you hit the marks than it is about tires or anything else. The tires seem to hold on pretty well.

Generally, the first lap is a little bit quicker, but I've seen a lot of people run faster the second lap.

It's such a momentum track that, if you slow your momentum down a little bit on the first because you didn't do what you wanted to do or the car didn't handle the way you wanted it to, the second lap can be better because you adjust to what your car is doing or you don't make the same mistake on the second lap.

You tend to take both laps there, but generally the first lap is better.

The softer tires will play a role there as we get into the race. I think as the tires start to wear out, that's when you see multiple grooves start to work in.

Dover is one of those tracks that have a lot of different grooves. You can run all the way against the wall almost, and the more the tires wear out, the more grooves you see.

Give and take plays a lot at Dover. The corners are exceptionally wide at Dover and the straightaways are exceptionally narrow.

These are some of the widest corners that we have, when you're talking about usable corner space, but it narrows up a great deal getting off the corner and it's narrow getting into the corner.

You can be three-wide in the corner, but you aren't going to be three-wide coming onto the straightaway. You've got to get sorted out. You really have to give and take a lot.

Even though they knocked 100 laps off the 500-lap races several years ago, Dover is a long race -- but green-flag runs at Dover are really what you want to see.

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It's a lot like Bristol in that when you have green-flag runs, you knock a lot of laps off really quickly. When you have a lot of cautions, it takes forever.

The green-flag runs are what you want to see from a driver's standpoint.

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Dover's pit road is very narrow. The speeds are high on the track, so you have to get your speed back down when you come on a green-flag stop.

You're going so fast that as you get onto pit road, you lose a lot of banking. We saw that last year with Matt Kenseth, who crashed coming into the pits. He got into trouble getting onto pit road under green.

It's tough. You're better off getting in and being conservative than you are being aggressive. The price you pay is too big.

As at every race, track position is very important. Having a good-handling car at the right time of the race and track position is very important.

With the softer tires, we've seen more value than in the past of pitting and putting on tires, so I think it will be the same at Dover.

Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet, will take fans Around the Track each race week during the 2005 Nextel Cup season.