NASCAR: What you need to know ahead of the Clash at Bowman-Gray Stadium

The annual unofficial start to the NASCAR season is here.

Sunday’s Clash (8 p.m. ET, Fox) will be held at Bowman-Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It’s the first time the non-points event has been held at the quarter-mile track after it was held for three years at the temporary quarter-mile track inside the Los Angeles Coliseum.

For the uninitiated, Bowman-Gray is known for its bumper-to-bumper racing on a weekly basis and its, uh, viral conflicts between drivers. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll see Cup Series drivers in a confrontation on Sunday night, but expect some contact.

Here’s an overview of the format of Sunday night’s race. After the Clash, the next on-track action for the Cup Series comes on Feb. 12 as preparation begins for the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16.

Main Event

Sunday’s race will be 200 laps and feature 23 of the 39 cars entered in the race. Only green-flag laps will count during the main event and during all heat races leading up to it. If there are a bunch of crashes and cautions, the race could take a while.

Practice Groups

The field has been divided up into three groups of 13 drivers for practice. The drivers were divided via their owners’ points position in the 2024 season. Here’s how the groups shake out

Group 1: William Byron, Kyle Larson, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace, Carson Hocevar, Riley Herbst, Noah Gragson, Ty Dillon, Austin Dillon, Ryan Preece, Tim Brown

Group 2: Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Austin Cindric, Shane van Gisbergen, Chris Buescher, Kyle Busch, Todd Gilliland, Cole Custer, Erik Jones, Justin Haley, John Hunter Nemechek, Burt Myers

Group 3: Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe, Brad Keselowski, Josh Berry, Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., AJ Allmendinger, Michael McDowell, Cody Ware, Garrett Smithley

Qualifying and Heat Races

Drivers will qualify for each of the four 25-lap heat races via their fastest laps during practice. The driver who posts the fastest lap in practice among all the groups will get the pole for the first heat. The second-fastest driver will have the pole for the second heat and the third-fastest driver will get the pole for the third heat and the fourth-fastest driver will get the pole for heat No. 4.

Three heats will have 10 drivers while one will have nine.

Practices begin at 6 p.m. ET on Saturday with the heat races to follow at 8:30 p.m. FS1 will have TV coverage.

Last-chance qualifier

The top five drivers in each heat will advance to the main event and start the race in positions Nos. 1-20. That leaves three open spots in the main event.

Two of the three spots will be determined via a last-chance qualifier race on Sunday afternoon. That 75-lap race will feature the 19 drivers who didn’t race their way into the field during the heat races on Saturday. The top two finishers in that race will get starting spots Nos. 21 and 22 for the main event Sunday night.

The 23rd and final starting spot will be given to the highest-finishing driver in last year’s points standings who didn’t make the race via the heat races or the last-chance qualifier. Logano, the defending Cup Series champion, is locked into the field for the Clash no matter what because of his points position. If Logano gets one of the automatic spots, Blaney is guaranteed into the field since he finished second in 2024.