NC’S WINSTON-SALEM — In 2025, the historic Bowman Gray Stadium will host NASCAR’s season-opening Clash exhibition race instead of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where it has been held the previous three years. Before an almost full house of 17,000 people at the quarter-mile oval in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Saturday night, NASCAR Chief Venue and Racing Innovations Officer Ben Kennedy made the announcement.
On Sunday, February 2, 2025 Clash will take place. Fox will broadcast the Cup Series non-points race. Bowman Gray has not competed in a Cup Series event of any kind since 1971, when NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Allison won it.
The inclusion of Bowman Gray in the Cup Series is somewhat of a throwback. In 1949, the circuit staged its inaugural NASCAR race. Kennedy’s great-grandfather, Bill France Sr., was a co-promoter of that race, and the track has since held races sanctioned by NASCAR.
“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.”
Since its founding in 1979, the Clash has been contested at Daytona International Speedway before relocating to the Coliseum in 2022. Since most of the venues for its elite Cup Series are located far outside of large urban markets or in midsize or smaller cities, NASCAR moved the race to a specially constructed circuit inside the Coliseum, close to downtown Los Angeles, in an effort to bring big league stock car racing closer to high-population areas.
Due to the Coliseum’s three-year contract expiring this year and NASCAR’s desire to keep expanding its schedule with new locations, the league started looking into potential locations for the Clash in 2025. Although other locations were taken into consideration, it was impossible to resist the novelty of going back to one of NASCAR’s original circuits, where its lower-level events enjoy tremendous support.
In March, Bowman Gray’s campaign gained more traction when NASCAR purchased the Hawkins family’s contract to oversee racing activities at the track until December 2050. The Hawkins family has leased the track from the city of Winston-Salem for many years; in fact, Alvin Hawkins, who passed away, and Bill France Sr. co-sponsored Bowman Gray races together back in the 1940s.
It seems kind of natural that Bowman Gray is taking over from the Coliseum as the next Clash host. Similar to the Coliseum, Winston-Salem State plays its football games on the oval track-encircled field at Bowman Gray. Additionally, Bowman Gray served as a de facto test site for Goodyear engineers while they decided which tire compound to employ at the Coliseum because both racing tracks were quarter-miles.
It is anticipated that energy-absorbent SAFER barriers will be constructed, which would mean tearing down the guardrails around the oval’s perimeter and erecting a new kind of wall structure. Additional caution lights and a redesign of Turn 3’s pit area entrance are two further possible modifications. Kennedy, however, emphasized that any modifications would preserve Bowman Gray’s historic character.
“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 2025 Clash’s rules and qualifications will be revealed. Bowman Gray’s cramped quarters mean that the starting lineup for the main event is probably going to be smaller than the entire field of 36 competitors in a points race.
(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
