WINSTON, SALEM, North Carolina (AP) — A bomb cyclone North Carolina forced NASCAR to push back its preseason until Wednesday night because snow-covered roads are too dangerous for teams and fans wanting to travel to historic Bowman-Gray Stadium.
The Clash was due to take place on Sunday evening and has now been postponed twice, with an adjustment to the schedule, due to the heavy snowfall that has blanketed the region. NASCAR first condensed the race into a one-day, Sunday-only spectacle, then pushed the race back until Monday.
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NASCAR said Sunday it was moving it to Wednesday night “due to the impacts of a historic winter throughout the North Carolina region.
The race is now scheduled a week before qualifying for the Daytona 500, at Daytona International Speedway, where The Clash ran from 1979 to 2022.
The Clash went to a temporary home track inside Los Angeles Memorial Stadium for three seasons, then moved to Bowman Gray last year.
The first year was a success, but the second edition was interrupted by Bomb Cyclone, known to meteorologists as an intense and rapidly strengthening weather system. This contributed to nearly a foot (30 centimeters) of snow in and around CharlotteNorth Carolina’s largest city and home base for the majority of NASCAR teams.
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The snowfall represented one of the five largest snow events ever in Charlotte, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
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