Does The NASCAR Clash Need To Exist?

The Clash has held the role of opening the NASCAR season since 1979, but in recent years its place in the sport is being questioned. Location changes, format changes, and changes to the fundamental principles the event was founded on, have made it into an enigma on the NASCAR schedule. What happened to make The Clash into what it is today? What can be done to bring it back to its former glory? Is it even worth having at all?

What is (or was) The Clash?

The Clash was first held in 1979, at the time known as the Busch Clash. The idea for the event came from Monty Roberts, the brand manager for Busch Beer. He had prior experience working in motorsports, so he was aware of the loyalty race fans old toward their sponsors, seeing the race as a great way to advertise the new rebrand. The initial format was a 50-laps sprint race, no pit stops, with the only competitors being the pole winners from the previous year.

The format was gently modified over the years, adding pit stops, splitting the race into segments, having green-white-checkered finishes, etc. Sound familiar? Intention or not, the league has used the non-point paying event as a way to experiment with some, at the time unconventional, rule changes, making it the proving ground for the rules we now see every week.

Despite the minor format adjustments, the general foundation of what the race was, a battle of the previous season’s pole winners, stayed. In some years there were additional wild card entries, whether that be a nod to poles earn in the lower series, a winner from a qualifier race, or even just a blind entry. Even with an extra entry or two, the spirit of the event remained the same.

That is, until 2008 when Coors replaced Anheuser-Busch as the Cup Series’ pole award sponsor, making pole not part of process for qualifying for the race. From here the original spirit of the event was completely lost. Ever year it was different: previous playoff drivers, previous race winners, previous champions, the last ten Rookie of the Year award winners, any Daytona 500 winners, and pretty much whatever else you could think of. Even whenever sponsorships changed again to allow for pole winners to be used, it did not go back to what it was. For a time, anyone who ever qualified on the pole for the Daytona 500 was locked into The Clash for life.

From 2017 on, it became evident that the magic of the event was completely lost. These years were the culmination of odd entry requirements, unnecessarily complicated formats, and most importantly, wrecks. Despite it having the best drivers on paper, The Clash had turned into a complete wreck-fest that the drivers and teams began to hate. No one wanted to wreck their Daytona 500 primary car over an exhibition race that really didn’t mean all that much. In 2019, only eight of the seventeen entries finished the race. Even worse, in 2020, only five of the eighteen cars finished on the lead lap. That year, nearly a quarter of the race was under yellow, with three attempts at overtime. Even though the highlight reel for that race is wildly entertaining, it took the event to its last straw.

See: 2020 Busch Clash Highlights – NASCAR on FOX YouTube

In 2021, due to the chaos of the previous year, and scheduling changes due to COVID-19 and the Super Bowl, The Clash was held on the in-field road course at Daytona, rather than on the super speedway. This this is when The Clash as it was known, had officially died.

The Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum

Like a phoenix out of the ashes of 2020 and 2021, came the Clash at the Coliseum. With the coming closure of Auto Club Speedway in southern California, NASCAR wanted to create an event in the region to capture the valuable television market. Somehow, that led to the construction of a quarter-mile temporary racetrack on the football field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

See: Track Build Time Lapse in the LA Coliseum – NASCAR YouTube

The idea was downright mad, and the skeptics were in very large numbers from the day the event was announced, up to the day when it became a resounding success. Not only was it a debut event, it was the debut of the Next-Gen car, the return of dirt-track style heat qualifier races, the first NASCAR event with a race-break concert, and even the first time Cup cars raced with mufflers. More importantly, it proved something: NASCAR can go anywhere. They built a racetrack inside of a football stadium and the possibilities from there seemed endless, with social media storms calling for NASCAR to bring the event to every stadium in the country.

However, the good feelings were short lived. The 2023 Clash did not deliver in the same way as the previous year. With the newness of the venue worn off, it was forgettable overall, leaving many to question if next year would be the year the league took the concept elsewhere.

To mixed reception, the LA Coliseum would be the venue for 2024. Even if the fan sentiment was mixed, the garage was definitely not happy about the return. The cost for the garage to travel across the country for an exhibition event was too much a burden to start off the year. Especially for the back marker cars who in the past wouldn’t have been in The Clash at all.

Come 2024, the event was nothing short of a catastrophe. The Clash was moved a day earlier, due to an incoming weather threat that turned into a week-long flooding event in the area. The heat races were canceled, and the starting lineup was set by practice times. The mid-race concerts were canceled, there were no pre-race festivities, and it was even unclear if the race would be televised. It eventually was, with the ratings effectively cut in half from the previous years. There were virtually no fans at the track, due to a controversial decision (regardless of the weather) not to have fans for the heat races the day before. NASCAR eventually decided to allow fans to attend, but the damage was already done.

Unfortunately, with many already wishing the event was moved after two years, the final nails were in the coffin for the Clash at the Coliseum.

2025 Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium

Despite the failure of 2024, NASCAR had still proved they could race anywhere, and on a track as small as one-quarter mile. Perhaps inspired by the revival of North-Wilkesboro Speedway for the All-Star race, in 2024 NASCAR acquired the lease for Bowman Gray stadium and announced The Clash at Bowman Gray to kick off the 2025 season.

Bowman Gray is a quarter-mile, flat, asphalt oval within a football stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It touts itself as “NASCAR’s longest-running weekly racetrack,” with the grass-roots NASCAR Weekly Series. The Cup Series ran a handful of races there, most during the 1960s, but the top series has not raced in the stadium since 1971. It is no doubt a valuable piece of NASCAR history, and will certainly be a fascinating return to the venue.

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What’s Next for The Clash?

I must ask the question, what is the purpose of the Clash at Bowman Gray? Unlike the return to North Wilkesboro, racing has been within these walls non-stop for years, and the facility finished a nine-million-dollar renovation in 2022, before it was know NASCAR’s top series would be returning. To me, it seems as if the league is ignoring what was discovered through the Coliseum. With the chance to go effectively anywhere in the world, we end up again in the backyard of North Carolina.

When the first LA Clash took place, the discussion around where the event could go next was massive, with fans vouching for their towns and cities all over social media. I have no evidence to support this claim other than postulation, but to me The Clash at Bowman Gray purely exists for financial purposes. There is no doubt that NASCAR took a monetary bath with the failures of 2024. Comparing a custom-built track across the country to a newly acquired facility a few miles away, there is no question which one will save millions.

The hypothesized alternative motives behind the event could be justified if there are other gains to holding the event at Bowman Gray. Yes, there is a great deal of valuable NASCAR history at the track, but that doesn’t mean the facility is deserving of a top-tier professional sporting event. The early pictures from Bowman Gray leading up to the weekend leave much to be desired, with it looking like some run-down backroad wrapped around the dying grass of a high school football field. The attendance at the facility is a mere 23,000, with standing room only, which is less than half that of the smallest NASCAR venues on the schedule. There is a lot of history at this place, but so far nothing has been done to lean in and revitalize that history in the same way that it was at North Wilkesboro.

For those reasons, it seems to me that the league is making a cash grab from its dedicated fans at the detriment to its valuable history. No matter what the on-track product is, there is nothing to grab the attention of someone unaware of the years of history, which is an advertising opportunity that can only go so far. The growth opportunity this concept could provide, and did provide in LA, is completely lost at this facility. NASCAR had indicated that nearly seventy percent of the attendees for the first LA Clash had never been to a NASCAR race before, I highly doubt Bowman Gray will deliver even seven.

Separate from my feelings about Bowman Gray Stadium, it’s hard for me to identify what the purpose is for The Clash at all, if it’s not to take NASCAR racing into new markets. As mentioned, the history revival shtick has been taken up by the All-Star Race. The Clash had seemingly found a new identity in LA, and in my opinion it needs to remember what was found. I love the NASCAR history, but I sincerely hope that the opportunities provided through the proved concept of stadium racing are taken advantage of in the future. Bowman Gray Stadium is not the place for this event.