And, as usual, Petty had a novel way of describing what it is like to race on the concrete high banks. The mountains are all the way around, mostly at each end of the track where the turns are banked the most, but the straightaways are banked a good bit, too. You race down in a hole. If you ever see the sky, you know you re in trouble. One mean deal Jeremy Mayfield qualified fifth and first in the two 2000 Dover races, and he has finished in the top five three times in his last eight tries.
Experience usually wins out at Dover because of that.
In some ways it s a little like a road course. In other ways, it s like one mean oval. You go uphill and downhill, too. That throws in an entirely different twist to the whole deal. Knowing how the track is going to react and what kind of changes you can expect mean a lot to a driver and a team, which is one of the main reasons experience is so important there.