2026 Dover Qualifying Challenge: Pit Road Entrance

“All the drivers should lift really early and be very careful tomorrow.”

That was Brad Keselwoski’s tongue-in-cheek advice in response to a question from RACER’s Kelly Crandall about the challenges of entering pit road at Dover.

“What do you think the over/under is Brad, tomorrow, for qualifying,” Kelly asked. “How many of you can’t get slowed down and hit pit road?”

Brad suggested she ask him again tomorrow, after qualifying, and he’d have a better answer.

Normally, getting onto Dover’s notoriously tough-to-enter pit road would be a Sunday concern. But because this is an All-Star Race, qualifying is on Saturday — and includes a live pit stop. That pit stop determines the order of pit box selection. A good pit box is extra important on Dover’s narrow, crowded pit road, which means qualifying becomes even more important for the driver.

But it’s also important for the pit crew given that there’s a $100,000 prize, along with a “cool trophy” (per Ryan Blaney), for the fastest pit stop during qualifying. That’s why Friday’s rare 90-minute practice session featured a lot of pit-road-entrance practice.

“Especially when there’s so much on the line,” Chris Buescher said, “everybody ends up not just doing one run at it in practice, they end up doing three, four or five. So it’s just very important here, because of All-Star qualifying.”

“You don’t want to let them down,” Ryan Blaney said. “They’re going for a hundred grand, and pretty cool trophy that I’m staring at. So, yeah, you don’t want to be the guy that messes up, and I’ve been that guy before.”

Blaney was standing in the doorway of the room where the Pit Crew trophy was being stored when I spoke to him Friday. And it IS a cool trophy.

What Tracks Have the Toughest Pit Road Entries?

If you ask drivers which pit road entries are the hardest, they return to a few common suspects. Tyler Reddick says Dover and Bristol are the two hardest for him.

“Here (Dover) and Bristol are both really tough getting to pit road,” Reddick said. “Just with how slow pit road speed is, and how much grip you have in your car. You’re relying on the concrete and the banking to create that grip, and you got to pull the car down and get, get it to the apron.”

“(Dover) is pretty high on up there,”Buescher said. “Richmond is pretty tricky, just a little less grip, a little less banking, tight at radius, but this one’s tough.

“(Dover) is close to number one, that’s for sure,” Blaney said. “Darlington‘s super tough, but in a different way. You’re kind of sliding to pit road, and then you got to get through 80 yards of flat apron to get there. Here, you’re kind of full commit, full send into the corner already on a razor’s edge, and then you’ve got to cross a couple banking changes to get there, and it’s right there. So, I would put this top two or three.”

These drivers gave us a couple good clues about what makes entering a pit road challenging.

• Tight turn radius
• Low pit road speed relative to track speed
• How much apron there is
• How difficult the transition from track to apron is
• Elevation changes

This is why Dover is so hard. It’s got ALL OF THEM.

The 2026 Dover Qualifying Challenge Explained

It’s like trying to give a dog medicine.

— Brad Keselowski

Anyone who’s ever had a dog (or cat, or small child) knows the problem. You have to manage a lot of stuff going on at the same time.

“You’re breaking, you’re dropping,” Keselowski explained. “So you drop about a story, you land, the car is like bouncing, and you’re trying to stop at the same time as you’re turning. The car just hates it. It really does. It hates it.”

Reddick notes that they’re going faster at places like Daytona and Talladega, but those are bigger tracks with higher pit-road speed limits. At Dover…

“It’s just the amount of banking you have,” Reddick says, “and how far into the corner you got to go.” Pit road entrance at Dover is right between turns 3 and 4.

One more aspect of the challenge, Reddick notes, is that they just don’t get much practice doing green-flag pit stops.

“Just the way these races have played out over the years,” Reddick said, “we haven’t had an abundance of green flag opportunities… We don’t have that near the amount of reps that we would at an Atlanta, at a Talladega, Daytona, Charlotte, Kansas, so I think that just adds to the difficulty.”

What to Expect

Although this is called the 2026 Pit Crew Challenge, the driver plays a critical role. NASCAR times the pit stop from the entry of pit road to the exit of pit road. From a line in the pit box behind the one the car is pitting in to a line in the pit box after the one being pitted. I asked NASCAR this morning but apparently my question was not clear enough the first time.

But even within the pit box limits, how the driver enters the box, how he positions the car, and how cleanly he exits are prerequisites for the pit crew to be able to do their best job.

The only element different from a normal green-flag pit stop is that fuelers won’t actually be putting fuel into the car. They’ll be there, with a empty fuel can, and play their normal part in the stop without actually transferring fuel. That’s to maintain the normal rhythm of the pit stop.

Every mistake — anything that would result in a penalty during a normal race — adds 10 seconds to the team’s time. If a driver speeds in three segments, that’s an additional 30 seconds added. But given how tight the competition will be, even a single mistake will take the crew out of the running for the trophy.

“I missed it a couple times in practice, just trying to get what we could get.,” Blaney said. “So, yeah, you’re gonna see some guys full commit tomorrow, probably some people miss it, but that’s that’s what it’s all about.”

The 2026 NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge will be on at noon ET, on FS1, MRN and SIRIUS XM.

I will add a picture of the really cool trophy as soon as they let it out for photos.