- Denny Hamlin won Dover’s All-Star Race, but it lacked excitement.
- Dover delivered great racing but lacked traditional All-Star energy.
- Drivers praised Dover’s racing quality but criticized the marathon format.
The checkered flag may have crowned Denny Hamlin as the winner at Dover Motor Speedway, but by the time the dust settled on Sunday evening, the bigger conversation inside the NASCAR garage was not really about who won the All-Star Race. Instead, it was about whether the event actually felt like one at all.
For years, NASCAR’s All-Star Race has been marketed as a spectacle synonymous with short, aggressive, unpredictable racing, something completely different from the weekly grind of the Cup Series schedule. But Dover’s first shot at hosting the exhibition race left several drivers with the same strange conclusion: the race itself was surprisingly good, yet the event somehow lacked the larger-than-life energy that traditionally defines an All-Star weekend.
Dover delivered strong racing, but NASCAR’s All-Star identity remains unclear
Ironically, the actual on-track product at Dover may have been the best the Next Gen car has produced at the concrete one-mile oval in years. NASCAR’s decision to bring a higher-horsepower, lower-downforce package, combined with extensive tire dragging and resin application across multiple grooves, created legitimate tire wear and multiple racing lanes throughout the afternoon.
And the drivers noticed it immediately. In fact, race winner Denny Hamlin praised NASCAR’s work preparing the racetrack and admitted the racing quality itself exceeded expectations.
“You had the extra horsepower too,” the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran explained post-race. “So you’re going in the corner at a slower rate of speed, so the tires are the one that has to make up the difference for grip you have lost. Then you’re applying more power. When you put the throttle down, it makes the car further out of control.”
“As you could see, we were running all over the racetrack. I thought NASCAR and the whole team did a great job preparing the track as good as they possibly could. Yeah, it’s as good as you’ll get.”
Yet despite the competitive racing, several drivers struggled to shake the feeling that the event simply resembled another Sunday points race. Long before the green flag even dropped, NASCAR’s “Most Popular Driver” Chase Elliott had already sensed it.
“It feels like a normal weekend,” Elliott said after practice on Friday. “I would say it feels the least like an All-Star weekend than it ever has in my career.” That sentiment only grew louder as the race unfolded.
Runner-up Chase Briscoe admitted afterward that the event never developed the unique atmosphere typically associated with NASCAR’s annual exhibition showcase. “Maybe it was because it was during the day,” Briscoe said. “I don’t know. All weekend it didn’t feel like an All-Star Race. It felt like a normal points race.”
Briscoe also pointed toward the race length itself as part of the issue. Traditionally, the All-Star Race is designed to feel frantic and compact. Dover’s version instead stretched into a four-hour marathon featuring two 75-lap opening segments and a 200-lap final run.
“It was so long,” the No. 19 driver 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.”
Even Hamlin jokingly questioned whether anyone fully understood when the actual “All-Star Race” officially began due to the elimination-heavy format. “When y’all print off a sheet, is it going to have 36 cars, or is it going to have 26?” Hamlin laughed while speaking with NASCAR officials afterward.
Still, the veteran made it clear that while the trophy mattered, Dover probably is not the permanent answer for NASCAR’s exhibition event. “First thing is 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,” Hamlin said.
That reaction perfectly captured the mood as the curtains fell on Dover. Hamlin acknowledged that, while winning the event still carries prestige inside the garage, it ultimately exists in a strange gray area compared to a normal Cup Series victory.
Chaos, crashes, and confusion defined an unusual Sunday at Dover
If NASCAR wanted unpredictability, Dover certainly delivered it. The weekend itself already looked different from a traditional All-Star format. There was no All-Star Open race; teams were given a rare 90-minute practice session, qualifying included pit-road speed penalties during a three-lap run with a live pit stop, and the race began unusually early at 1 p.m. ET.
Then came the race itself, a lengthy, caution-filled affair that often felt more chaotic than prestigious. The opening segment alone featured two separate nine-car crashes, both involving Elliott. Drivers, including Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson, saw their realistic chances evaporate before the race had even fully settled into rhythm.
Yet because of the format, damaged cars were still allowed to return later in the event after repairs, adding another layer of confusion to an already unusual afternoon.
Meanwhile, the inversion system created awkward moments throughout the day, especially once eliminations began shrinking the field ahead of the final segment.
Even veteran owner-driver Brad Keselowski seemed unsure what to make of everything by the end. “I’ll need to sleep on that,” Keselowski admitted afterward. “Let me digest on that one, a lot happened today.”
Hamlin, meanwhile, acknowledged that the exhibition victory still carried some long-term value, despite not officially counting toward career statistics. “I mean it’s cool,” Hamlin told Matt Weaver during the post-race scrum. “It will go on your resume when they’re debating where to put you in or where not. But, yeah, it doesn’t go on the stat sheet.”
In short, at Dover, the racing was arguably better than many expected. The drivers genuinely enjoyed how the track raced. But as the laps dragged on and the crashes piled up, the event increasingly felt less like NASCAR’s annual showcase and more like a strange hybrid of a regular-season race, perhaps a playoff elimination format, and a test session rolled into one.
