Key Takeaways
- Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on FS1 and HBO Max, the NASCAR All-Star Race lands at Dover Motor Speedway for the first time in the event's 41-year history. The Monster Mile is the 6th different host track since the showcase started in 1985.
- The format is three segments — 75, 75, and 200 laps — with NO All-Star Open, a 26-driver final-segment field, and Saturday's Pit Crew Challenge running as the qualifying mechanic. All laps count in all three segments.
- 17 drivers are already locked into the final segment: Byron, Larson, Bell, Hamlin, Elliott, Reddick, Keselowski, Logano, Cindric, Blaney, Berry, Austin Dillon, Briscoe, Chastain, Shane van Gisbergen, Wallace, and Kyle Busch. The rest of the field is set Sunday on track.
- Shane van Gisbergen brings the most recent Cup win — Watkins Glen last Sunday, by 7.288 seconds over Michael McDowell — into a venue that could not be less like a road course.
- Tyler Reddick still owns the points by 129 over Denny Hamlin, but the All-Star Race is non-points. Sunday is about the trophy and the way the field treats a 1-mile concrete oval at full aggression.
- The pre-race ceremony leans into Memorial Day weekend — three Bronze Star recipients from Dover Air Force Base as grand marshals, NASCAR Hall of Famer Donnie Allison among the dignitaries, and Mike Joy of NASCAR on FOX waving the green flag.
Let me tell you something, folks.
For most of the last forty-one years, the NASCAR All-Star Race was a Charlotte thing. The event has wandered since — Bristol in 2020, Texas in 2021 and 2022, North Wilkesboro for the last three years — but the center of gravity stayed in the South. Five prior host tracks across forty-one years. The showcase has bounced around like it was nailed to a regional map.
Sunday afternoon, that map gets a new pin in it.
Dover. The Monster Mile. The Northeast. First All-Star Race in the event's entire history at this place. (Full Dover Motor Speedway track guide here.) One-mile concrete oval. Twenty-four degrees of banking in the corners, nine on the straights. A frontstretch and a backstretch each 1,076 feet long. Dover does not flatter cars and it does not flatter drivers and it does not flatter race cars at half-throttle — which, since this race has no points and no fuel-saving math, is the entire point of putting the showcase here.
The format is the headline. Three segments — 75 laps, then 75 laps, then 200. No All-Star Open. All laps count. A competition break around Lap 225 in the final segment. The top 26 from Segment 1 get inverted at the start of Segment 2 (because of course they do), and the 26-driver final field is set Sunday based on points-paying wins from 2025 and 2026, past All-Star winners who run full-time, past Cup champions who run full-time, the combined Segment 1 + Segment 2 finishing results filling in to 25, and the NASCAR All-Star Fan Vote landing the 26th and final spot. (Full format walk-through is here.)
Saturday is its own piece of theater. The Cup qualifying session IS the Pit Crew Challenge — green flag, one full lap at speed, then on the second lap the car peels into a designated pit stall for a four-tire stop with no fuel, then back out and race to the checkered flag. Total elapsed time wins pole. Fastest stop wins the Pit Crew Challenge. And — listen — the order finished in that Pit Crew Challenge is the order teams get to pick their pit boxes for the actual race. That is a big-time mechanic. The crew that's been BRINGING IT all spring gets the inside box. The crew that has not, picks last. (The Trucks and the O'Reilly Series have their own previews — as does the Saturday O'Reilly Series show.)
So who's hot?
Shane van Gisbergen, last Sunday at Watkins Glen. SVG — the New Zealander, the Trackhouse No. 97, the sport's road-course of record — won Watkins Glen by 7.288 seconds over McDowell. Seventh career Cup win. All seven on road or street courses. He drove from twenty-seven-plus seconds back after a green-flag stop on Lap 76 and took Ty Gibbs on Lap 93 and never looked back. That's not nothing. SVG is locked into the All-Star Race on his own merit — the points-paying winner rule that his Watkins Glen win triggered — and the trophy Sunday means the same to him as it does to anyone else on the property. That's the All-Star Race.
Tyler Reddick. Reddick is leading the championship by 129 points over Denny Hamlin and he finished fifth at Watkins Glen. The cleanest combination of speed and consistency in the sport right now. The All-Star Race is non-points but the win counts on a résumé. Look for the 23XI No. 45 to be near the front in Segment 1 and to gamble in Segment 2 with the invert.
Kaden Honeycutt and Justin Allgaier are running this weekend too. Honeycutt is the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series points leader — 29 ahead of Chandler Smith — coming off his first career Truck win at Watkins Glen on the 8th, which was also a same-day ARCA + Truck sweep that only Sam Mayer at Bristol in 2020 had ever pulled off. Allgaier brings the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series form leadership to the BetRivers 200 on Saturday — three wins, five runner-ups, nine top-fives, and 179 stage points through 12 races. Both of them tell you the same thing about the developmental ladder: the kids who win in the lower series define the next decade of Cup, and the kids running the All-Star Race in five years are running for points on Friday and Saturday at Dover this weekend.
Now — the track is the wild card. Cup teams have one weekend of Bristol data with the same Goodyear left-side tire (the D-5276), and one Dover weekend of right-side data from July of last year (the D-5260 — dedicated Dover concrete rubber returning). That's the engineering frame. Greg Heinrich, Goodyear's NASCAR product manager, put it like this on the 12th: "Teams will be able to combine their data from Bristol in April with their running from Dover last season to optimize their setups ahead of this weekend. We are bringing a tire setup specifically designed to withstand the track's high speeds and heavy loads, while also helping lay rubber on its concrete surface, particularly given how smooth it is."
Translation: the teams that figured out Bristol in April are ahead on the left side. The teams that worked the Dover concrete in July are ahead on the right. The team that has both notebooks open on Sunday morning is ahead of everybody.
Hendrick has the most All-Star wins of any organization in the sport — 11 — and Chevrolet has 21 manufacturer All-Star wins to lead the field. Larson's won three (2019, 2021, 2023) and is the active leader. Chase Elliott won at Bristol in 2020 with crew chief Alan Gustafson on top of the No. 9 box, where Gustafson still sits. Joey Logano has led 369 All-Star laps in 15 starts — the most laps led in this event by anyone, ever — and Logano won the thing in 2024 at North Wilkesboro. Jimmie Johnson holds the all-time wins lead at four (2003, 2006, 2012, 2013). Mark Martin made 24 starts, which is its own kind of record. The pattern is plain: the All-Star Race rewards the prepared driver, the prepared crew chief, and the prepared organization. The format invites chaos. The trophy goes to the team that saw the chaos coming.
So who's cold?
Look. William Byron finished 36th at Watkins Glen and Joey Logano finished 38th after a left-front issue that caused a Lap 61 caution. Two locked-in All-Star contenders arriving at Dover off rough Sundays. A 350-lap race on concrete is the kind of place a championship-tier car can re-find its footing and remind everybody who they are.
And here's the thing — the All-Star Race rewards experience at the format more than it rewards pure speed. The drivers who have lived through inverts and segment breaks and the trophy on the line know how to manage 75-lap windows. The drivers who haven't, find out Sunday.
The pre-race ceremony is its own story, and it's the story of Memorial Day weekend. Three Bronze Star Medal recipients from the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover Air Force Base — Col. Bryan Ellis, Lt. Col. Robert Shuler, and Maj. Brandon Gremillion — serve as grand marshals, recently decorated for service during a 12-day war deployment at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The U.S. Army Fife and Drum Corps from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — The Old Guard — handles both the Presentation of Colors and the National Anthem. Donnie Allison, Alabama Gang, 2024 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee and a NASCAR ambassador for more than fifty years, is among the dignitaries. And Mike Joy, the NASCAR on FOX lead commentator, waves the green flag.
That's the holiday weekend in the Northeast on a 1-mile concrete oval with the trophy on the line and 26 cars staring down 350 laps.
The All-Star Race is the showcase. Dover is the new stage. Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.
I'll see you down at the Monster Mile.