NASCAR and Dover Motor Speedway owner Speedway Motorsports said that they will “evaluate the future location for the All-Star Race after this weekend,” according to Bianchi & Gluck of THE ATHLETIC. There is a “growing sense that Dover’s time as All-Star Race host will end after one year, with a points race returning in 2027.” A “packed fan zone Sunday morning and grandstand that appeared no less full than recent years seemingly supported NASCAR’s decision” to bring the All-Star Race to Dover. However, many drivers and fans surveyed said that they “prefer Dover to have a race that counts toward the championship, not be an exhibition.” During the winner’s press conference, driver Denny Hamlin said that Dover’s configuration is “so unique that it not having a spot on the regular schedule is a loss.” Hamlin: “There’s no other track like this on our schedule. It is so unique, and it requires such a unique style of driving, far different from any oval we go to, that you can’t lose tracks like this in our points schedule.” Bianchi & Gluck note popular suggestions from drivers for where the All-Star Race could go “were Charlotte Motor Speedway and Bowman Gray Stadium.” Charlotte was the longtime venue, hosting 34 races over 35 years, while Bowman Gray hosted the Clash for the past two years. Both tracks having lights would “allow the All-Star Race to revert to its more traditional slot as a nighttime event” (THE ATHLETIC, 5/17).
NOT THE SAME: MOTORSPORT’s Matt Weaver wrote the All-Star Race did “not remotely feel like an All-Star Race during the day in Delaware with a full field taking the green flag before eliminations and inversions.” Driver Chase Briscoe said, “Maybe it was because it was during the day. I don’t know. All weekend it didn’t feel like an All-Star Race. It felt like a normal points race.” He added, “All-Star Races typically are like the shortest race of the year. I felt like it was a Coke 600 or something or the Southern 500. It took forever” (MOTORSPORT, 5/17). In Delaware, Martin Frank noted the All-Star Race in the past consisted of “perhaps a hundred or so laps that would appeal to the casual fan, making it seem like, well, an All-Star race, or at least special.” Dover does not have lights, and the race “came barely one-third into the season, and it seemed like, as Hamlin put it, ‘a points race that wasn’t a points race.’” Hamlin said, “Let’s give Dover their points race back. And then let’s figure out where we’re going to go and then figure out the format” (DELAWARE NEW JOURNAL, 5/17).
