What the Cook Out Clash means to the Bowman Gray community

The Clash was once about getting a coveted coat.

That might seem hard to conceive now for an event that has crisscrossed the country twice in the past three years while mushrooming into a preseason extravaganza, bringing NASCAR to fresh, untapped and occasionally under-appreciated markets.

But during the exhibition race’s 33-year run at Daytona International Speedway, multicolored jackets were a major perk that signified your car had made the invite-only club for Cup Series pole winners.

“There was a couple of times in those races that was the highlight,” Wood Brothers Racing co-owner Len Wood said with a chuckle. “They gave them to all the team members. That would have been the highlight of the week.”

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Heading into its 47th running, the ancillary benefits and earth-shattering buzz have far outgrown those exclusive fashion statements of The Clash, which will be held outside Daytona for the fourth consecutive year this weekend as an annual preseason party with an all-inclusive ambiance.

Bowman Gray Stadium, a NASCAR mainstay for seven decades in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will take the baton from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, an iconic arena primarily known for the Olympics and football that spotlighted stock-car racing on a temporary asphalt oval in the middle of the concrete jungle.

The last few seasons have stirred omnipresent chatter about the merits of rotating the Cup championship finale, but The Clash is offering a real-time template of how that vision could resonate in both attracting new fans and placating the old guard.

“I think it’s great that the location is changing, and I think it should change every year,” Alex Bowman said. “Obviously we have the capability of doing it. We’re going to tiny race tracks with it now. So continuing to evolve it and do different things is kind of what NASCAR has become all about. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds.”

Though it’s likely The Clash (which sold out two months early) will have an engagement with Bowman Gray Stadium beyond 2025, three-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano said the event should head to new destinations.

“It always draws up a little bit more excitement, and people talk about it more when it’s something new,” said Logano, who won the inaugural Clash at the Coliseum. “When we went to LA the first time, remember all the talk of what that race was going to be like and no one had a clue?

“It draws up a lot of hype, which is good, and you’re also bringing it to the race fan. When you look at what Winston-Salem is to our sport, and that whole region, there are a ton of NASCAR fans there, but it’s also cool that we’re giving race fans that might not have been able to go to other races an opportunity to see a race. Whether that’s in Winston-Salem or in LA or name a city, I think moving it around is cool because it gives people opportunity.”

Citing new Cup races in Mexico City, the outskirts of Nashville and downtown Chicago as other examples of bringing NASCAR’s product to the people, Christopher Bell sees The Clash’s recent history as a blueprint for the future.

“I love that concept, and I love the diversification of the NASCAR schedule,” Bell said. “I would love to get to a point in NASCAR where we’re going to every venue once a year. And I think that just helps create excitement and helps make every race feel like an event.

“I’m glad that the days of going to Pocono twice in a month and Michigan twice within two months are behind us, and I would love to see more new tracks on the schedule every year. I think that’s super important.”

Evolving from the Daytona oval

From 1979-2021, The Clash was a fixture (albeit under various sponsor-driven monikers) at Daytona International Speedway. It’s a little dizzying to reflect on how the willingness to take the show on the road was accepted virtually overnight as a stroke of scheduling genius.

The vibe shift started with the baby steps of moving the event from the Daytona oval to the track’s road course in 2021. Then came the quantum leap of spending millions to construct a temporary short track inside the LA Coliseum, which drew a debut crowd of 50,000 with at least 70 percent first-time ticket buyers (per NASCAR data).

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“I thought what we did in LA, especially the first year with how many new fans, was one of the largest wins our sport has ever seen that I’ve been a part of,” Logano said. “Going to a whole new market and racing downtown basically. I thought that was huge.”

Now it’s back to the future at Bowman Gray, a rough-and-tumble quarter-mile that has held more than 1,000 NASCAR-sanctioned races since 1949 but primarily is famous for its weekly modified series since its most recent Cup race was held in 1971.

In moving from the second-largest metropolitan area in the country to the fifth-largest city in North Carolina, there is a common thread.

Once a private society of pole winners meeting for a match race at Daytona (its inaugural field had nine cars racing for 20 laps), The Clash was repositioned in LA as a carnival with “halftime” concerts and heat races.

The same atmosphere will be celebrated in Winston-Salem, where The Clash will be held over two days with several hours of practice, qualifying and racing sandwiched around fan festivals. With a nod to the track fondly known as “The Madhouse” for bare-knuckle racing, there also will be a modified race on Saturday.

For the co-owners of Wood Brothers Racing, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, untethering The Clash from Daytona’s pure focus on racing was the right call for turning it into a traveling show.

“Back in the early days of Daytona, you were talking about being over in 16 or 17 minutes,” Len Wood said. “That was a short show. What they did (in Los Angeles) with the heat races and the concerts like Ice Cube, they made a whole day of it, and I think that went over much better than a 17-minute show.”

While Eddie Wood recalls it was “a big honor” to make The Clash at Daytona, he is giddy when explaining what the event will mean for Bowman Gray Stadium, a racing hotbed where he has attended races since it “was almost the center of NASCAR” in the 1960s.

“The way they’re doing it now, instead of a race, it’s an event to me,” Wood said. “You’ve got so many things going on, and I just think it’s good for Winston-Salem. I’ve been there in the middle of the summer and for opening night for the weekly series, and it’s packed. I’ve seen 18,000 to 20,000 people there. I’m interested in seeing the back wall above the grandstand. I’ve seen that with people six deep, so I’m interested to see how that shakes out. I like what they’re doing.”

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Having raced Modifieds four times at Bowman Gray Stadium, Ryan Preece believes Winston-Salem deservedly has been rewarded with a major-league exhibition after its long absence from Cup.

“That’s a city that gets behind racing (and) Bowman Gray Stadium,” he said. “For anybody that’s never been to that race track on their typical weekly show, the place is jammed. It’s a community that loves racing and supports the race track.”

The future of The Clash

Which community might get the next crack at The Clash?

Cup drivers have myriad ideas but also have realistic expectations for an event that naturally must take place during the winter.

“It’s really tough because there are different little pockets in the United States that are really passionate about racing,” Preece said. “The challenge is it’s February.”

The Roush Fenway Keselowski driver suggested trying The Clash at New Smyrna Speedway, just south of Daytona.

A Southwest locale also would make sense. NASCAR once ran a winter heat series in Tucson, Arizona (which happens to be Bowman’s hometown).

“If we’re going to do it in stadiums, there’s obviously all kinds of places we can go,” Bowman said. “If we’re going to go to different race tracks that Cup just doesn’t go to, I think there are a lot of great race tracks throughout the country that can put on a good show. It just is tough being in February or January. But there’s all kinds of places to go. There’s probably not one that’s fair to pick. I feel like we can kind of put it anywhere, and they’ve continued to show that.”

Logano leans toward another major metro area.

“I would love to see our sport continue to do things like that because it just feels big,” he said. “The Coliseum felt like a big event. I’m not saying Bowman Gray doesn’t feel big, but it feels like we’re going to our grassroots, which is also cool in its own way but different. So, personally, I’d like to see us race in the cities.

“That’s where our sport has a little bit more of a challenge because it’s hard to put a 1-mile or 2-mile race track in a city. So if we have the opportunity to be like a baseball, basketball, hockey and NFL team, where their stadiums are where the people are and where people can walk to it, you get a whole new demographic.”

For at least another year, though, it’s expected those Clash fans will be flocking to Bowman Gray Stadium.

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“I just think that people are going to be really excited for it,” Chase Elliott said. “I think that that’s going to last more than a year. Hopefully, it just carries the energy a little further before they have to switch it up again.”

Said Preece: “The energy that they’re going see from that community, even though it’s probably going to be 42 degrees or whatever, it’s going to be awesome.”

And maybe just the right temperature for a vintage Clash coat.