When the NASCAR Cup Series returns to Bowman Gray Stadium next year for the first time since 1971, racing at the comfortable quarter-mile – in keeping with the track’s decades of tradition – should be close. Logistically, NASCAR officials and teams will also get a taste of this theme, which will require some creative thinking to make the procedural ending of the season-opening Clash work properly.
NASCAR officials released race weekend schedules for the first five months of the 2025 racing schedule on Thursday, unveiling a new look for practice and qualifying for the three national series. Included was a first look at the Clash season-opening exhibition on February 1-2, with an early look at the schedule and some format details.
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Bowman Gray’s planning and internal operations include a unique approach to the inspection process. Due to the tightness of the garage, which normally hosts weekly racing series, pre-race inspection for the Cup Series will take place at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where cars will be checked, sealed and loaded before arriving at Winston. -Salem track, one hour away.
“We take a massive footprint with our carriers, with all of our technical equipment as well as the NASCAR Series support carriers that are required, so we’ve definitely had to look at things a little differently on what we’re going to do for inspections and how we’re going to do it,” Cup Series director Brad Moran said. “Our good friends at Charlotte Motor Speedway have been working with us, so we appreciate (track executives) Marcus Smith and Steve Swift having. made the facilities available to us. Everything is there. pre-wired and ready to go, obviously we go twice a year, and what we’re going to do is something a little different than what we do at a normal event.
Moran said a full pre-race inspection will take place inside the Charlotte circuit garage on Thursday, Jan. 30, and cars will be impounded and secured with tamper-evident seals before making the trip north. The haulers will park Friday, one day before officials break the seals, allowing teams to unload and set up behind the stadium field ahead of on-track activity on Saturday, Feb. 1.
Moran said the post-race inspection following Sunday’s main event will be carried out with scales and shock equipment, but without the optical scanning station (OSS) used to analyze the cars’ chassis and bodywork. He also said inspection stations including OSS would be set up this weekend at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, with the aim of inspecting backup cars before the race on Sunday in case teams have significant damage to their main vehicles during Saturday’s preliminaries.
Officials said a full format for the inaugural Clash at Bowman Gray would be released during the first two weeks of the new year. Thursday’s weekend schedule shows that some elements of the three editions of the Clash held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will be retained.
Four heats of 25 laps starting at 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday will help determine the starting lineup for the main event, and a 75-lap last chance qualifying race is scheduled for Sunday at 6 p.m. ET, two hours before the finale of 200 laps (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM Radio), where only green flag laps will count and a midway break will allow teams to make adjustments.
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The schedule will include a 125-lap race called the “Madhouse Classic” for the Stadium Modified division. This event is scheduled for Saturday at 1:45 p.m. ET, before the Cup Series returns.
“From a competition standpoint, we’re getting close,” Moran said of the final format. “We have almost everything wrapped up. We’re just waiting on a few more items to check a few boxes, but we’re close to having this whole plan in place and ready to go.
One element of the Los Angeles events that will be retained is the handling of pit stops, with some necessary modifications. In Los Angeles, teams had smaller-scale pit crews in the paved infield of the quarter-mile track in case their cars had a problem. At Bowman Gray, the infield is grass with no infield walls, so a makeshift road will be established behind the field, connecting the pit entry gate at Turn 3 with the pit exit gate at Turn 4.
Pit stops on this same path are relatively rare at Bowman Gray during weekly competitions given the layout of the track and the external pit road running through the garage. For the exhibition Cup Series, Moran said he expects a similar paucity of stops.
“It’s a limited piece of equipment and teams prefer that,” Moran says. “There are no real pit stops unless you have a problem, right? I don’t think anyone would go out there and give up their entire track position unless they had a problem, so the tire situation would be the same as in Los Angeles. So if they had a flat tire, they are only allowed to change one tire. for a tire until the break, and that’s when full tires and adjustments are made during that break. It will probably look like Los Angeles.
Construction continued at Bowman Gray this week with the installation of concrete support walls ahead of the installation of the SAFER barrier. A new MUSCO lighting system is also on the list of renovations at the pioneering stock car racing venue, which hosted 29 ticketed Cup Series races from 1958 to 1971 and has been operational for weekly NASCAR events since 1949 .
Planning is also underway right next to the racing surface, as the proposed garage layout begins to take shape. Moran said he was familiar with the stadium from his visits for weekly events and races for what is now the ARCA Menards Series East, but that the competition team made visits to take measurements and determine where everything could fit. This represents the work areas of the teams, fuel supplier Sunoco, tire partner Goodyear and broadcast group FOX Sports and NASCAR, in addition to official NASCAR transporters.
“You start adding it all up for this event,” Moran says, “and you start to run out of ground very quickly.”
