Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
Following Kyle Busch’s victory at Talladega, NASCAR leaves Alabama and heads to Delaware for 400 miles around the steep banks in Dover.
Therefore, let’s wrap up action from this past Sunday’s GEICO 500, review numbers from last year at Dover, and assess some expectations for this Sunday Wurth 400.
GEICO 500 Wrap Up
For the first 142 laps, Talladega was unusually quiet, as only two real cautions had flown – both for individual cars that had come to stop on the track. However, on Lap 143, the first “big one” happened followed by another big accident with three laps left in the race, dragging the GEICO 500 into overtime. Following the overtime restart, a seven-car wreck occurred, forcing another overtime, only to see a final caution for a five-car wreck on Lap 196 that ultimately froze the field and ended the race. In the end, Busch grabbed his second victory of the season, despite not really being in position to win before the string of cautions started waving on Lap 185.
The scope of this race changed so much from Laps 185 through 196, and it’s hard to really to say we learned anything from Talladega. Drivers who were on the cusp of winning, or having great fantasy days, went to busts as their place differential went negative in the final laps. Thankfully, after having three superspeedway-style races in the first 10 races of 2023, the next time we see an event like that will be in July at Atlanta.
Dover Motor Speedway
As stated above, NASCAR goes from the 2.66-mile superspeedway in Talladega to the mile-long, steeply banked oval in Dover for 400 laps of action this Sunday. Well, hopefully that is, but more on that later.
Dover is a track the Series visits just once-per-year now, as Dover lost its second race to Nashville Speedway a few seasons back. With the peculiarities of Dover, not to mention its concrete racing surface, it’s hard to have an apples-to-apples comparison for Dover. Bristol is banked in a similar fashion but half as long, while Darlington has its own steep turns but is a third of a mile longer. Furthermore, both tracks are asphalt compared to concrete, and yes – the racing surface does matter.
What we, as DFS players, are left with is a race like Pocono where we have tracks with similar features to Dover but no true corollary track to help with our driver’s assessment. There’s definitely nothing in 2023 to hang our hat on, as Dover will run the short-track package. It’s the same package we saw at the short, flat tracks of Phoenix, Richmond and Martinsville.
Expectations for the Wurth 400
For Sunday, let’s turn the page back to last year – a race won by Chase Elliott. Oddly, last year’s race was impacted by rain early on, as the precipitation brought out a yellow flag on Lap 69 with Denny Hamlin in the lead. Hamlin, who started second, had taken the lead from pole sitter Chris Buescher, who led from the green flag up until Lap 18. For what it’s worth, the past four Dover pole-sitters have all failed to lead more than 27 laps.
Following the presumption of the race, Kyle Larson grabbed the lead on Lap 74 only to lose it to teammate Elliott on Lap 93, who yielded the lead back to Hamlin on Lap 112. Hamlin’s lead was short, as Ross Chastain took the number one spot on Lap 124 and led for 36 laps before losing the top spot to Martin Truex Jr. for a single lap before reclaiming the lead for another 30-lap stint.
In all, the lead changed hands 17 times (the most since the Spring of 2017) among eight different drivers, fueled in part by the bevy of cautions that day. In all, there were 12 (including the two stage breaks) cautions, including a final yellow flag on the last lap as Truex spun on the backstretch. Altogether, nearly 19% of the race was run under the yellow flag with the average green flag run only lasting 25 laps. The top lap leader that day (Busch) led the fewest laps for the race’s top lap leader than any race during the Generation Six (2013-2021) era at Dover. Furthermore, this was the first Dover race since the spring event of 2016 to feature at least four drivers who led 10% or more of the race.
Considering the changes to the short-track package, and what it’s supposed to elicit out of these vehicles, it would be no shock to see another caution-filled Sunday with the lead changing multiple times with multiple restarts. However, the weather could be a factor. The early outlook for Dover is not promising with Saturday, Sunday and Monday all projected for rain in the Dover area.
