Bowman Gray Stadium, NASCAR’s longest-running weekly track, is the early favorite to again host the season-opening Clash exhibition race in 2026, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a continued sign of the sanctioning body’s commitment to the sport’s roots.
In early February, NASCAR held the Cook Out Clash before a sellout crowd of more than 15,000 people at the venue that was built during the Great Depression in 1937 and still serves as the home of the Winston-Salem State University HBCU football team.
The race was widely deemed a success in the industry. The fans who showed up were some of the most passionate that NASCAR has seen at a race in recent memory, with the venue nicknamed “The Madhouse” living up to its name. In one particularly memorable moment, 2023 Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. tangled with Burt Myers, one of the local ringers who entered the race, resulting in many fans directing some vitriol toward Stenhouse. Stenhouse later called the moment “gnarly” on the Dirty Mo Media podcast “The Teardown.”
Now, five people familiar with the matter have called Bowman Gray the favorite to land the event again next year, even though NASCAR has been considering taking the race elsewhere in 2026, including possibly internationally. In August of last year, some NASCAR executives reportedly met with representatives in Brazil about bringing the Clash to São Paolo in 2026.
NASCAR declined to comment, and it’s seen as early in the process. But keeping the event at Bowman Gray for another year would be a sign of NASCAR’s continued commitment to its roots, and a signal that it still will reward smaller communities across the U.S. when they show up in force for events.
The sanctioning body has been on a two-pronged mission of sorts in recent years to expand to new venues and markets, while also going back to some lapsed ones that played a role in its history. Fox Sports worked with NASCAR to develop a documentary around the history of Bowman Gray, “The Madhouse: NASCAR’s Return to Bowman Gray,” which aired the week of the event and was narrated by Tom Rinaldi.
Still, the move to return to the Clash to North Carolina, in the 46th biggest media market in the U.S., also would raise questions about where that leaves NASCAR’s international ambitions. NASCAR continues to meet with government officials and businesspeople from countries all over the world, including Asia, the Middle East, South America and Canada, about bringing a race there.
One of the people familiar with NASCAR’s thinking said the sanctioning body may elect to hold an invitational exhibition overseas due to the exorbitant costs involved, while possibly keeping the Clash at Bowman Gray for the next couple of years.
This year will represent the first premier series points race outside the U.S. since 1958, as NASCAR travels to Mexico City in June for an event that will be aired exclusively by Prime Video.
DRIVER AMBASSADORS: The Driver Ambassador Program that NASCAR started this year appears to be off to a good start, with agents and sanctioning body leadership among those saying they think it will become an important pillar of the sport’s marketing efforts.
The program is based around a proprietary digital app that NASCAR set up with athlete brand-building software company INFLCR, with a points system that ultimately will result in cash payments to drivers depending on the quantity and quality of their promotion of the sport. Sources say the program involves a scoring system on the app in which drivers are ranked 1-5 based on their star power, with the reigning champion getting one additional point.
The app shows drivers and their agents potential media opportunities in which they can partake outside of the normal run of show at races, and they can submit their own ideas. Drivers get more points for the size of the media platform they’re on; for example, being on national TV will get a driver four points an hour. They get 1 point for every 15 minutes. NASCAR will pay out drivers twice a year, with the top performer to get $1 million and the bottom performer to get around $7,500, meaning a driver could make as much as $2 million from the program a year.
Based on early evidence, it appears that drivers are taking advantage of the potential for new cash earnings. Some fans on social media took note and were surprised when they saw the sport’s most popular driver, Chase Elliott, fly to Chicago with Bubba Wallace just before the season began to do a round of media hits, including with Barstool Sports. But with the Driver Ambassador Program, the drivers are no longer doing such work without financial reward.
“There was an all-driver meeting yesterday and some discussion about kind of working closely with the drivers and the Driver Ambassador Program, but it’s really an industry coming together as one, which is critical in order to optimize the growth,” NASCAR President Steve Phelps told Sports Business Journal. “Teams seem quite receptive to doing exactly that — what are the content opportunities, what are the opportunities to drive revenue together, what are the opportunities to look at JVs together — there’s lots of opportunities there.”
Several drivers also have been involved in new TV advertisements this year, and brands around the sport in general debuted a host of fresh spots heading into the season. That includes Xfinity with 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick; Consumer Cellular with RFK Racing driver and co-owner Brad Keselowski; Ford Motor Co.; Chevrolet; Toyota; Interstate Batteries with Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell; and Chili’s with Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevrolet.
Chipotle also is in the sport for the first time through an endorsement deal with driver Ryan Blaney and a track agreement with Atlanta Motor Speedway, and Buc-ee’s founder Arch “Beaver” Aplin III was at the Daytona 500 evaluating possible sponsorships.
