NASCAR moving Clash race to Bowman Gray Stadium in 2025 (2024)

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — NASCAR’s season-opening Clash exhibition race will shift to historic Bowman Gray Stadium in 2025, replacing the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which hosted the event for the past three years. NASCAR Chief Venue and Racing Innovations Officer Ben Kennedy made the announcement Saturday night before a near-capacity crowd of 17,000 at the quarter-mile oval in Winston-Salem, N.C.

The 2025 Clash will take place on Feb. 2, a Sunday, with Fox televising the Cup Series non-points race. This will mark Bowman Gray’s first Cup Series race of any kind since 1971, a race won by NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Allison.

Bowman Gray’s addition to the Cup Series represents a throwback of sorts. The track hosted its first NASCAR race in 1949. That race was co-promoted by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., Kennedy’s great-grandfather, and since then, the track has hosted NASCAR-sanctioned races.

“This is a homecoming for us,” Kennedy said. “It’s gonna feel new and fresh with our cars and our drivers and the young talent that we have, but this is also a historic place on many levels for the weekly racing that we have. And we raced here for decades with our Cup Series, too. So it’s gonna be a neat blend when we come back next year.”

Before moving to the Coliseum in 2022, the Clash had been held at Daytona International Speedway since its inception in 1979. NASCAR shifted the race to a purpose-built track inside the Coliseum, near downtown Los Angeles, as a way to take big league stock car racing closer to high-population areas as most of the tracks for its premier Cup Series are well outside major metropolitan markets or in midsize or smaller cities.

With NASCAR’s three-year contract with the Coliseum ending this year and NASCAR wanting to continue adding different venues to its schedule, the league began to explore where else it could take the Clash in 2025. Multiple venues were considered, but the novelty of returning to one of NASCAR’s foundational tracks where its grassroots-level races are incredibly well supported was too enticing to pass up.

Bowman Gray’s candidacy further rose in March when NASCAR acquired the lease from the Hawkins family to manage racing operations at the track through December 2050. The track is owned by the city of Winston-Salem, with the Hawkins family holding the lease for decades; the late Alvin Hawkins even co-promoted Bowman Gray races with Bill France Sr. dating back to the 1940s.

That Bowman Gray is taking the baton from the Coliseum as the next host of the Clash is somewhat fitting. Like the Coliseum, Bowman Gray is used for football, with Winston-Salem State playing its games on the field that the oval track surrounds. And with both racing surfaces being quarter-mile, Bowman Gray was used as a de facto test facility to help Goodyear engineers determine which tire compound to utilize at the Coliseum.

Energy-absorbant SAFER barriers are likely to be installed, which may necessitate removing the guardrails along the outside of the oval and installing a different type of wall structure. Other potential changes could include bringing in additional caution lights and reworking the entrance to the pit area in Turn 3. But Kennedy stressed any changes would be done with keeping the historic essence of Bowman Gray intact.

“Our biggest challenge is keeping what makes Bowman Gray so special,” Kennedy said. “It’s the seating, it’s the guardrails, it the fencing, it’s the racing product; it’s everything about this place that every single Saturday night is what makes Bowman Gray so unique. So yes, it’ll feel and look a little bit different when we come here next year. But when we have weekly racing, we still want fans to have a very similar experience every week.”

The format and eligibility for the 2025 Clash will be announced. Due to Bowman Gray’s tight confines, the likelihood is the starting lineup for the main event will be fewer than the full-field 36 that contest a points race.

(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

Jordan Bianchi is a motorsports reporter for The Athletic. He is a veteran sports reporter, having covered the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, college basketball, college football, NASCAR, IndyCar and sports business for several outlets. Follow Jordan on Twitter @jordan_bianchi