Team Penske NASCAR Cup Series driver Austin Cindric isn’t ready to admit which tracks are his favorite but he knows exactly which one he’d take you on if he had a passenger seat in his race car.

“If I was to put a passenger seat in a race car and take it to a racetrack, I’d take you to Dover,” Cindric told Newsweek.

Delaware’s Dover Motor Speedway has earned its “Monster Mile” nickname thanks to its one-mile oval construction and 24-degree, 58-foot wide banked turns. Drivers can go around 170 mph on the abrasive track, which eats specially compounded tires at an alarming rate on race days.

Cindric has one win at the track, in 2021 as part of NASCAR’s more junior Xfinity Series. He led the final 51 laps. Since his move into Cup Series cars, Cindric has been less successful at the track since moving up to the Cup Series, placing no higher than 12th in the four races he’s driven there since 2022.

The professional driver calls out the speed of the track and its dynamics as two of the key things he loves about Dover.

“The sensation of speed at Dover is better than any other racetrack, even visually” Cindric explained.  “I’ll never forget my first Xfinity qualifying session there. I walked out there and there was the 45 car. It was almost two seconds off the pace in a 22-second lap. I lapped that car like six times in practice. I walk out on pit road and qualifying just started tail end of the field is going out, and that 45 car looked like it was hauling the mail. I was like, ‘Man, I’m going way faster than that guy and that looks scary fast.”

In the car, circling Dover is an even more adrenaline level-raising proposition. Cindric began to describe what it’s like: “You drop several stories into the corner. You typically are committing to partial throttle, if not full throttle, way before you can ever see the exit of the corner. It’s very stimulating. And then you pop out of the hole and go on the flat. You get tire spin towards the end of the skid. It’s a very fun racetrack.”

As much as he enjoys the speed and dynamics of the track, he has questions about Dover’s position in this year’s NASCAR Cup Series calendar. The speedway will host the NASCAR All-Star Race on May 18, for the first time in history. The last two years, the race has been held at the historic North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina.

“Do I think it’s the best track for the All-Star star Race? That’s yet to be seen. But it’s one of my favorites to just cut a lap,” Cindric said.