{"id":49315,"date":"2025-01-30T20:24:38","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T02:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=49315"},"modified":"2025-01-30T20:25:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T02:25:21","slug":"nascar-weekend-preview-bowman-gray-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/30\/nascar-weekend-preview-bowman-gray-stadium\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Weekend Preview: Bowman Gray Stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Clash honors grass roots racing with visit to Bowman Gray Stadium<\/b><\/p>\n

From a novel experiment in one of America\u2019s largest urban markets, NASCAR\u2019s season-opening exhibition races moves to a venue steeped in racing history.<\/p>\n

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The NASCAR Cup Series travels to NASCAR\u2019s oldest weekly racing track for the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium (8 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Photo courtesy of NASCAR<\/p><\/div>\n

After a successful three-year tenure in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the NASCAR Cup Series opener travels cross-country to NASCAR\u2019s oldest weekly racing track, morphing into the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium (8 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

Reigning Cup Series champion Joey Logano applauded the move to Winston-Salem, N.C., in a video conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it always draws up a little bit more excitement and people talk about it more when it\u2019s something new,\u201d said Logano, who won the first Clash at the Coliseum in 2022. \u201c\u2018What are we going to see at Bowman Gray? I don\u2019t know.\u2019 When we went to L.A. the first time, remember all the talk of what that race was going to be like, and no one had a clue?\u201d<\/p>\n

To Logano, the \u201cunknown\u201d factor is a critical aspect of the move. So is NASCAR\u2019s ability to bring its events to a wide array of fans in different markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt draws up a lot of hype, which is good, and you\u2019re also bringing it to the race fan,\u201d Logano said. \u201cI\u2019ve said this many times before, but it is hard to ask a family of any size to travel a long distance to go to a sporting event. It\u2019s hard to do that, whether you have young kids or older kids, getting hotel rooms, getting the tickets, it becomes expensive. These days, it\u2019s hard to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I think moving our races around, going to our race fans is great. When you look at what Winston-Salem is to our sport, and that whole region, we all see the numbers and there are a lot of NASCAR fans there, a ton of them, and so going to our race fans is kind of going back to grass roots up there, but it\u2019s also cool that we\u2019re giving race fans that might not have been able to go to other races an opportunity to see a race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the Los Angeles venue and Bowman Gray Stadium are at opposite ends of the country\u2014and opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to NASCAR history\u2014some aspects remain the same.<\/p>\n

The purpose-built track in Los Angeles and the traditional track at Bowman Gray are the same length, a quarter-mile. The formats of the events likewise are similar, though heavy rains forced abandonment of the original schedule last year, with the main event moved from Sunday to Saturday as the only way to complete the race.<\/p>\n

The Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium will feature practice\/qualifying and four heat races on Saturday, with a 75-lap last-chance qualifier and 200-lap main event on Sunday, 50 laps longer than the event in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Michael McDowell, who has moved from Front Row Motorsports to Spire Motorsports this season, has been watching YouTube videos to get the flavor of the rough-and-tumble racing at Bowman Gray.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it\u2019s nothing like those (videos),\u201d McDowell quipped in a question-and-answer session with reporters on Wednesday. \u201cI\u2019m sure YouTube only gives you the algorithm of the very best of Bowman Gray.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we all kind of know what it is going into it, that it\u2019s going to be a beating, banging race, just because of how tight the corners are and how narrow it is. It\u2019s tough to pass. But I feel like, going into the Coliseum, we all thought (we knew) what it was going to be, and it turned out to be a pretty awesome event\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I feel like\u2014my hopes are\u2014that we do a better job than most of putting on a good show that doesn\u2019t turn into guys driving through the infield.\u201d<\/p>\n

If history is any indication, track position will be critical at Bowman Gray, placing great importance on finishing positions in Saturday\u2019s heats. NASCAR\u2019s top division hasn\u2019t raced at Bowman Gray in 54 years, but in the 23-year span from 1959 through 1971, no Cup winner came from outside the second row.<\/p>\n

In the last 14 Cup races at the track, the pole winner took the checkered flag 10 times, with the second-place starter winning four times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be tough to pass this weekend,\u201d said 2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson. \u201cI hope we can give the fans the kind of exciting racing they\u2019re used to seeing on a Saturday night in the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure the energy will be high in the stands\u2014and be crazy on the track, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service NASCAR Clash honors grass roots racing with visit to Bowman Gray Stadium From a novel experiment in one of America\u2019s largest urban markets, NASCAR\u2019s season-opening exhibition races moves to a venue steeped in racing history. After a successful three-year tenure in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the NASCAR Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":49316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[982,983,16],"class_list":["post-49315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-bowman-gray-stadium","tag-cook-out-clash","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Whelen63.jpg?fit=900%2C599&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-cPp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49318,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49315\/revisions\/49318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}