When the NASCAR Cup Series makes its return to Bowman Gray Stadium next year for the first time since 1971, the racing on the cozy quarter-mile — in keeping with the track’s decades of tradition — is expected to be tight. From a logistical standpoint, NASCAR officials and teams will get a taste of that theme, too, which will require some creative thinking to make the procedural end of the season-opening Clash all work.
NASCAR officials released race-weekend schedules for the first five months of the 2025 racing calendar Thursday, unveiling a new look for practice and qualifying for all three national series. Included was a first look at the season-opening Clash exhibition Feb. 1-2, with a preliminary glance at the schedule and certain format details.
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Included in the scheduling and inner workings for Bowman Gray is a unique take on the inspection process. Because of the close quarters in the garage area, which normally hosts weekly racing series, pre-race inspection for the Cup Series will be held at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where the cars will be checked, sealed and loaded up before their arrival at the Winston-Salem track, one hour away.
“We take a massive footprint with our haulers, with all our technical equipment as well as the NASCAR series support haulers that are required, so certainly we had to look at it a little differently on what we’re going to do for inspections and how we’re going to do it,” said Cup Series director Brad Moran. “Our good friends from Charlotte Motor Speedway worked with us, so we appreciate (track executives) Marcus Smith and Steve Swift putting the facility up for our use. It’s all pre-wired and it’s ready to go, obviously. We go there twice a year, and what we’re going to do is something a little different than what we do on a normal event.”
Moran said a full pre-race inspection will take place inside the Charlotte track’s garage building on Thursday, Jan. 30, and that cars will be impounded and secured with tamper-proof seals before making the trip north. Haulers will park Friday, one day before officials break the seals, allowing teams to unload and set up behind the stadium’s fieldhouse ahead of on-track activity Saturday, Feb. 1.
Moran said post-race inspection after Sunday’s main event will be done with scales and shock equipment, but without the Optical Scanning Station (OSS) used to analyze car chassis and bodies. He also said inspection stations that include OSS would be set up that weekend at the NASCAR Research & Development Center in Concord, for the purpose of inspecting backup cars pre-race Sunday in case teams have substantial damage to their primary vehicles in Saturday’s preliminaries.
Officials indicated that a full format for the first running of the Clash at Bowman Gray would be released in the first two weeks of the new year. Thursday’s weekend schedule reveal shows that certain elements from the three editions of the Clash held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will carry over.
Four 25-lap heats starting at 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday will help determine the main event’s starting lineup, and a 75-lap last chance qualifying race is set for 6 p.m. ET Sunday, two hours ahead of the 200-lap feature (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM Radio), where only green-flag laps will count and a halfway break will allow for teams to make adjustments.
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The schedule will include a 125-lap race called the “Madhouse Classic” for the stadium’s featured Modified Division. That event is scheduled Saturday at 1:45 p.m. ET, ahead of the Cup Series’ return.
“From a competition standpoint, we’re getting close,” Moran said about making the format final. “We’ve almost got everything buttoned up. We’re waiting on just a couple other items to check a few boxes, but we’re getting real close to having this whole plan put together and ready to go.”
A component from the Los Angeles events that will carry over is the handling of pit stops, with some necessary alterations. In L.A., teams had smaller-scale pit crews available in the paved infield of the quarter-mile track in case their cars had an issue. At Bowman Gray, the infield is grass with no interior walls, so a makeshift pit road will be established behind the fieldhouse, connecting the pit-entry gate at Turn 3 with the pit-exit gate at Turn 4.
Pit stops on that same path are a relative rarity at Bowman Gray during weekly meets given the track’s layout and external pit road through the garage. For the Cup Series exhibition, Moran said he expects a similar scarcity of stops.
“It is limited equipment, and the teams prefer it that way,” Moran says. “There are no real pit stops unless you have a problem, right? I don’t think anyone would go down there and give up all their track position unless they have a problem, so the tire situation would be the same as L.A. So if they had a flat, they’re only allowed to change the one tire for one tire until the break, and that’s when the full tires and adjustments get done during that break. That’ll probably look similar to L.A.”
Construction continued at Bowman Gray this week with the placement of concrete backing walls ahead of SAFER barrier installation. A new MUSCO lighting system is also on the list of renovations for the pioneering stock-car racing venue, which hosted 29 points-paying Cup Series races from 1958-71 and has been in operation for weekly NASCAR events since 1949.
The planning has been underway just off the racing surface, too, as the proposed garage configuration starts to come into focus. Moran said he was familiar with the stadium from his visits for weekly events and races for what’s now the ARCA Menards Series East, but that the competition team has made visits to take measurements and map out where everything might fit. That’s accounting for work areas for teams, fuel provider Sunoco, tire partner Goodyear and FOX Sports’ and NASCAR’s broadcasting group, in addition to the NASCAR official haulers.
“You start adding all that up for this event,” Moran says, “and you start running out of ground really quickly.”
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