NASCAR Clash at Bowman Gray: Time to move past mere entertainment

Elizabeth Blackstock
NASCAR Cup Series Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium PlanetF1

The NASCAR Cup Series field practices for the Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.

Chase Elliott took a decisive victory at Sunday’s 200-lap NASCAR Clash, an exhibition event that was hosted for the first time at the historic Bowman Gray Stadium in North Carolina.

The racing was messy, with both the Last Chance Qualifier and the main event studded by needless crashes as drivers fought for position; while many fans were critical of the quality of racing, many did admit to being entertained. But shouldn’t we be looking for something more than mere entertainment?

The NASCAR Clash and the entertainment conundrum

Beginning in 1979, the NASCAR Cup Series season kicked off with a non-championship event known as the Clash. At the time, the event was seen as a way to bring race fans into Daytona for Speedweeks, or, the several week period where endurance racing and stock car racing swapped the stage.

In an era of unreliability, the Clash was a great way for the NASCAR field to get warmed up for the year. As reliability improved, fan loyalties turned the Clash into a can’t-miss event, one that filled grandstands in and of itself.

But as the 2020s got underway, teams grew concerned about the amount of money they were throwing away to compete in a non-points-paying race, and series executives started to toy with the format.

First, the event was moved from the Daytona International Speedway oval to the infield road course. Then, the Clash headed out to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — a small venue that received much of the same criticism as that I’m about to levy, albeit with the added bonus of drawing a whole new audience into the sport.

This year, NASCAR moved the Clash to Bowman Gray Stadium, one of the legacy oval tracks that defined the early years of the Cup Series. The small nature of the track required four heat races to set the field, with a contentious Last Chance Qualifier completing the lineup ahead of the main event.

Chase Elliott won both his heat race as well as the main event, allowing the fan favorite driver to take home his first-ever Clash victory. But beyond that, Sunday’s racing was characterized by reckless driving and lots of wrecks. Many fans, unsure of what to make of the whole affair, decided that, at the very least, the wrecks made for some captivating entertainment.

More on the NASCAR Cup Series:

??NASCAR lawsuit: All the allegations of monopoly-like behavior against the Cup Series

??NASCAR Playoffs explained: Format, rules, tracks, and schedule

But shouldn’t entertainment be just?one of the many factors against which we evaluate a race in 2025?

All forms of sport, be it racing or something like football, seek to find the ideal balance between sporting integrity and entertainment. Fans need to tune into these events, to go out of their way to attend them — but with events like the Clash, that entertainment is beginning to conflict with the integrity of NASCAR, and the goals of the series.

Over the past several years, NASCAR has pushed itself to evolve, adding street circuits or international races to its calendar while balancing out its growth by trying to cut developmental costs — and it has been exceptionally promising.

A race on the streets of Chicago proved that NASCAR Cup Series racing can transcend the oval format and engage new audiences, while the implementation of the Next-Gen car was hailed as being as good for teams’ pocketbooks as it has been for drawing in international talent like Shane van Gisbergen.

But the Clash at Bowman Gray flew in the face of those goals. As drivers collided with each other and bit the wall for an event that is of no direct consequence to the 2025 championship, it was difficult not to wonder how much the repair bill would be, and what value any of the teams were getting from any of this.

The location itself gave cause for concern. The Cup Series stopped turning up at the quarter-mile Bowman Gray Stadium all the way back in 1971 because its cars had outgrown the oval, and the problem of size popped up again and again during the Clash as drivers fought for purchase — generally by simply knocking a competitor out of the way.

While drivers like Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson, and Chase Elliott all displayed legitimate and considered race craft when it came to positioning their cars and overtaking other drivers, most of the rest of the field relied on bumper shoves and late braking to mount a move, and it generally resulted in chaos.

The Clash was entertaining, at least in the most basic sense that a lot of drama happened, and a lot of cars wrecked. But the whole event felt like a bastardization of the ethos driving modern NASCAR and forced a certain level of cognitive dissonance.

To enjoy the wrecks in the Last Chance Qualifier, it was necessary to ignore that many of the cars in the event were there because they’re fielded by smaller-budget teams, and that those teams will find it more challenging to afford a slew of repairs — an especially daunting task considering the Cup Series’ crown jewel race, the Daytona 500, is on the horizon.

Entertainment is important in racing, yes, but defining entertainment as “lots of wrecks” does a disservice to the drivers, teams, and fans invested in the growth and evolution of NASCAR.

Read next: Explained: NASCAR Cup Series points and championship format

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