Dover Motor Speedway has hosted NASCAR Cup racing since 1969, becoming one of the more distinctive venues on the schedule thanks to its high-banked concrete oval and the punishing physical demands it places on both drivers and machinery. The track's single-mile layout — with 24-degree banking in the turns — produces intense racing at speeds that make mechanical failures and driver fatigue constant concerns. The spring race at Dover, which would later carry names like the Mason-Dixon 500 and eventually the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400, became a consistent fixture on the Cup schedule.
For most of the period from 1971 through 2020, Dover hosted two Cup races per season: a spring event and a fall race that was incorporated into the NASCAR playoffs for much of its modern history. The fall race was removed from the calendar after 2020 when Dover Motorsports elected to shift one of its two dates to Nashville Superspeedway.
The 1971 fall race saw Bobby Allison dominate the field until a lug bolt broke during a pit stop, dropping him from contention and handing Richard Petty the win across the final 100 laps.
In 1975, Richard Petty lapped the entire field before running over debris from a blown engine, breaking a tie rod and spending eight laps in the pits. Despite falling six laps down, Petty erased the entire deficit and won after a late caution brought lapped traffic into play.
The 1976 fall event featured Cale Yarborough losing two full laps on two separate occasions and recovering to win — a demonstration of the aggressive pace at which Dover could be raced back through the field.
In the 1981 fall race, Neil Bonnett claimed his second win of the season's final three events, while Harry Gant led 178 laps before his engine failed with 63 laps remaining — a bitter outcome for a driver whose near-wins became a recurring Darlington and Dover theme.
The 1992 fall race saw Ricky Rudd edge Bill Elliott while Alan Kulwicki crashed, seemingly ending his championship run. Kulwicki recovered to claim the title by the narrowest margin in NASCAR history.
A landmark moment came in 1998, when Mark Martin won the fall event while Matt Kenseth made his Cup debut in the same race, substituting for Bill Elliott, who had left the track to attend his father's funeral.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the 2001 fall race — the first Cup event after the September 11 attacks — and celebrated with a Polish victory lap while holding an American flag. The white flag was not waved on the final lap, creating confusion in the broadcast booth.
By 2013, Jimmie Johnson had accumulated eight wins at Dover, breaking the record previously shared with Richard Petty and Bobby Allison. Johnson claimed ten or more wins at a single track — a milestone shared by only a handful of drivers in the sport's history.
The 2021 race, the first time since 1970 that Dover held only one Cup event, ended with Alex Bowman winning and Hendrick Motorsports sweeping the top four positions — one of only four times in NASCAR history that a single organization placed four cars in the first four finishing spots.
Dover's history with the Mason-Dixon name reflects a period when regional titles were common for NASCAR events and when the track was establishing itself as one of the circuit's premier venues. The "Monster Mile" identity — earned through the battering physical demands of the one-mile, high-banked oval — proved more durable than any single sponsor name. The track's record for multi-winner dominance is strong: Jimmie Johnson won at Dover more than any other driver in the modern era, and Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, and Darrell Waltrip each won multiple times during the Mason-Dixon era.