In between managing the stifling heat, endless restarts and a nearly hourlong rain delay, Denny Hamlin peeked at the Dover Motor Speedway running order during his victory Sunday.
The scoring pylon told the story of two teams and a 2025 Cup Series title that increasingly seems destined to be determined between two reigning powerhouses of NASCAR.
“It was all JGR and Hendrick (Motorsports) there at one point; I think it was top eight,” Hamlin said, adding with a smile. “Resources goes a long way, apparently.”
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The balance of power at the 1-mile concrete oval has tipped decidedly in favor of Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, which now have combined to win 15 of the past 20 races at Dover (and 12 of 17 oval races during the 2025 season).
The Monster Mile is living up to its nickname as a championship measuring stick that is not for the faint of heart or the weak of the NASCAR Cup Series.
Hamlin led a top six exclusively of Hendrick and JGR drivers, but it easily could have been a clean sweep of the top eight for the four-car squads.
William Byron ran in the top five throughout before being caught in a late crash with his No. 24 Hendrick Chevrolet. Christopher Bell led 67 laps but lost control of his No. 20 JGR Toyota twice while racing hard for first on restarts.
“Dover and spinning out, I‘ve got a problem with that,” Bell later joked.
There is no shame in that at Dover, particularly under extreme conditions rarely seen at the track. This season marked the first Cup race held in July at Dover since its 1969 debut, and the field was subjected to withering temperatures with triple-digit intensity while navigating the track‘s nauseatingly steep banking.
“This is one of the more physical, demanding race tracks that we go to anyway,” Hamlin said. “It’s certainly in the top three just simply because of the G-forces it has. You don’t have long straightaways to take breaks. Typically, drivers like to relax their bodies on the straightaways to not fatigue all your muscles during the course of a three-and-a-half-hour race.
“There’s not a lot of time to do that at this track.”
The Dover victory roster underscores that only a select list of stars reach Victory Lane there.
In the past two decades, there have been 16 winners of Cup races at Dover. Six are in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, two were on this year‘s ballot, and two (Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.) will be surefire locks for induction in the next two years.
Of the remaining six, four are active Cup champions. The other two are Alex Bowman and Hamlin, who needed 14 years — and hours of studying the driving styles of Jimmie Johnson and Truex — to earn his first win at Dover.
“This is an oval race track, but this is the most unorthodox that you drive a track like this,” Hamlin said on the TNT post-race show. “You cannot drive it like a normal oval, like any other track on the circuit. You have to approach it differently, and it just took me a long time to figure that out.”
Despite being an outlier that was cut to one annual race four years ago, Dover is emerging as a barometer for the best teams in the Cup Series.
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That designation once belonged to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the winner of the Brickyard 400 went on to win the Cup title eight times in 12 seasons from 1998-2009. That trend then shifted toward 1.5-mile speedways, which once comprised half of the 10-race playoffs.
But during the Next Gen era, competitive parity has become a popular story line on the 1.5-mile ovals, which also no longer weigh so heavily into the championship.
When this year‘s Championship 4 field is set, and particularly if Hamlin finally manages to break through for his first championship, Sunday‘s Dover results will be worth revisiting.
A monster day on the “Monster Mile” might have more meaning than ever.
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