Winston -Salem, NC (AP) – Ryan Blaney was a little kid the first time he ran to the Bowman Gray Stadium – he thinks he couldn’t have been 10 years older – and remembers that C ‘was the coolest thing he ever made in Motor Sport.
He was in a bandolero, an entry -level car designed for young pilots, running in front of 17,000 fans who understood the biggest crowd he ever saw like an athlete. The intensity was out of the charts, on the track and in the crowd.
“I was shot on the bird by younger children than me when I was 10,” Blaney said on Saturday. “So it was like” ok, that’s what this place is talking about, people like you or they don’t do it. “And I don’t even think they didn’t love me. I am 10 years old. What can’t love a 10 year old child? It was so funny for me.”
This is the expectation of the level of intensity on Saturday and Sunday evening, when Nascar returns to his roots To run the exhibition pre-season confrontation in a place where he brought his cutting cars for the last time in 1971. While Nascar went to larger and more modern markets and installations, Bowman Gray remained Stuck in time. It houses the Winston-Salem state university football team and serves as a quarter of a quarter of a weekly local races.
The track is so small Nascar recently made a video highlighting what can and cannot adapt to Bowman Gray. Among the things that could possibly be in a hurry? A BUC-EE convenience store and a Bass Pro Shops store were deemed “barely”, while the Penske team’s racing shop, at more than 300,000 square feet, was a non-final.
THE tight limits The average accidents are often – the modified race on Saturday afternoon has not even taken a tour without its first wreckage – and TEMPERS Flare on the track called “Mecca of Madhouse” For fireworks produced by action.
Kyle Busch, one of Nascar’s most volatile drivers, joked on the field met Nascar earlier on Saturday and “they have already given us the list of who is supposed to fight with whom”.
This is sort of what is expected on a notorious rough track where the owner of the car, Richard Childrade, sold peanuts in the stands when he was a child and Eddie Wood was seated in the same seats every Saturday evening in Eating fries with vinegar that his father, Wood Brothers Racing Racing the founder Glenn Wood, won 29 races in all divisions.
Tim Brown, a 53-year-old mechanic for Rick Ware Racing, is the most victorious pilot in the history of Bowman Gray with 101 victories and 12 championships and perhaps not joke when he said that the fights were an obligation to run on the track.
Brown won a seat for this event with RWR for his cup series beginnings in what he called a dream come true for a local companion runner. And in 30 years of racing in Bowman Gray, he thought he had been 10 fights.
“It’s pretty good, right?” They are good, “he said.
How much did he win?
“All,” replied Brown.
But what brings this intensity to Winston-Salem, where the stadium was built in 1937 for $ 2.2 million as a public works project to provide jobs during the Great Depression?
“Just passion. I am very passionate about what I do on and out of the racetrack, and we are very proud of our equipment and our racing cars are immaculate, “said Brown. This level, so if you tear my racing car, I’ll come and see you.
The first event in Bowman Gray was a football match in 1938 between Wake Forest and Duke, and the first motor sports race was a Midget car race in 1939 when the track was a dirty oval. The first race sanctioned by the NASCAR took place in 1949.
The race does not count for the points and is the period of February 16 Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, which welcomed the Clash from 1979 to 2021. It was moved to Los Angeles Memorial Stadium on a temporary Nascar track built at the Interior inside the last three seasons, but have been transferred to North Carolina to try to return to the base of the stock of cars.
This only has pride, and yet each driver on the ground wants to win.
“You want to win in interesting places, historical places like this,” said Blaney. “These guys who won in the Colosseum is a really historic place. You can say that I won at the Colosseum in Los Angeles and it’s the same thing. I think I can have this title would be pretty cool. »»
For Busch, he appreciated the opportunity for a Nascar race in a small local place and the advantages that Bowman Gray can harvest from the exhibition. While the discussion swirls on the place where the event should take place in the future, Busch wants to raise small short tracks.
“We are going somewhere to reinvest in the future for other racing and local levels – to be able to see a better place, take advantage and bring their sponsors and have fun and run and compete – will only benefit from the top Said Busch. “There are short tracks in Florida which are cool. Pensacola is one of them that would really benefit from this opportunity. There is an Alabama couple who would really benefit from this opportunity. »»
“Back on investment? I do not know, but I think that the return on investment is the young generations and the youngest runners who want to be someone and manage to run in a nice place, then can go up the ladder and one day, come back one day And go back and race on their home track as a pro, “he added.
The confrontation begins on Saturday evening with the 39 cars divided into groups for short training sessions, followed by four heat races which will determine the departure range of Sunday evening. From 1959 to 1971, all the Cup winners came from the first two rows for 26 consecutive races.
The main Sunday evening event will be 200 laps with a half-time break at 100 laps, and only the green flag towers count.
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