Cliff Diving at Dover
Monster Mile’s 24 Degrees of Banking Launches Drivers Off a Ledge
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (July 17, 2025) – Back in the day, coverage of NASCAR Cup Series races was interspersed with ski jumping from Oberstdorf, West Germany, log rolling from Hayward, Wisconsin, and cliff diving from Acapulco, Mexico.
It was all on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and after Jim McKay’s iconic voiceover, “Spanning the globe… to bring you the constant variety of sport – the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat!,” you would get 20-45 minutes of racing action until the show switched to any number of sports, and then maybe you’d be treated to another dose of racing before yet more log rolling and cliff diving until the final 15 laps were delivered to your Sony Trinitron.
As old-school as that sounds in this brave new world of live, flag-to-flag coverage with alternate simulcasts on various streaming platforms with real-time telemetry available on your phone, the cornucopia that was Wide World of Sports remains alive and well at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400.
Racing is, of course, represented at the aptly named “Monster Mile,” and so is cliff diving and, when things go wrong, log rolling, or rather, barrel rolling.
“It feels like you’re driving off a cliff at Dover,” said Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Mighty Fire Breaker Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing. “You almost come out of the racetrack on entry into (turns) one and three there because the transition from the straightaway to the corners is so massive.”
Dover’s one-mile, concrete layout features two 1,706-foot long straights banked at 9 degrees, connected at each end by corners banked at 24 degrees. It is a monstrous juxtaposition that makes the Monster Mile chew up and spit out both green rookies and grizzled veterans alike.
“It’s the elevation change that makes Dover so unique and challenging. It’s probably a two-story drop from the straightaways down into the corners. Your car gets light, and if you’re fighting a loose-handling condition, the rear of the car really wants to come around on you,” Ware said.
“You’re basically driving down and into a hole, which creates this massive compression zone, and once you land the bottom of the car, your front tires load up. It’s a whole different feeling. There isn’t another track on the schedule that prepares you for it. It’s what sets Dover apart.”
It is a leap of faith that drivers take twice, every lap, for 400 laps.
“Dover is a place where it’s about max commitment,” Ware said. “The first time you go down into turn one, you’re holding your breath.
“You kind of have to overcommit into the corners. What you would think is overdriving actually keeps stability in the car on corner entry. It’s very late braking, very late lifting, and it definitely gets pretty hair-raising as the tires wear out during a run.
“It’s white-knuckle racing from start to finish. It’s all about commitment. It’s all about confidence in your racecar and what the team’s bringing on that race weekend. If you make it to the end of 400 laps at Dover, it’s a feat in and of itself.”
While the entire track presents a challenge, turns three and four ratchet up the level of difficulty.
“Into turn three and out of four always seem to cause the most chaos,” Ware said. “Just the commitment factor of driving into turn three, along with the big compression zone, but then you’ve got a big bump coming off turn four. And as tire wear plays more of a factor, you typically see some pretty big moments coming off turn four. So if you’re a fan and you want to be in the spot to see some action, see some chaos, turn four is the place to be.”
The AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 will mark Ware’s sixth career Cup Series start at Dover.
“I feel like I’m still a rookie every time I go to Dover just because you never feel like you quite get enough out of yourself when you’re there,” Ware said. “But I still know what to expect, so getting good, straight, clean drives off turn four as the race progresses is what I’m looking to do.”
Ware and his Cup Series counterparts take to the Monster Mile for the first time on Saturday when practice begins at 1:35 p.m. EDT followed by qualifying at 2:45 p.m. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. Sunday’s 400-lap race goes live at 2 p.m. with coverage delivered by TNT and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age 6 when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track, FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) and zMAX CARS Tour.
