
Theory:
Sometimes, we want NASCAR to do all the things it used to do, not because we think it’s the best way to do things now but really how it made us feel back then.
It’s the dopamine hit that only nostalgia can provide.
Many of us want season long championship formats, a Busch Clash for pole sitters only at Daytona and the All-Star Race at Charlotte where it belongs or something of the sort. That’s fine as long as we’re intellectually honest about why.
But how could anyone not stand in the infield at Bowman Gray Stadium on Sunday night, without knowing what television did and didn’t show, and not feel the same way you did as a kid watching The Winston on FOX?
Under a multicolored LED lighting system, teams and drivers pushed their cars around the track to both loud applause and dastardly jeering depending on which side of the ledger they fell on in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The people were right there on top of the teams and you could make out very clearly how they felt about you.
It was awesome.

This is to say nothing of the racing product itself, which largely delivered a very professional 200 lap main event after a chaotic series of heat races on Saturday and an absolute slug fest of a Last Chance Race.
Watching the Clash weekend was like experiencing a roller-coaster of emotional epiphanies. The Heat Races were a theatrical mess, for reasons both good and bad, and the Last Chance Race was an extension of that feeling.
On one hand, drivers were getting mad at each other, despite the absurdities of racing on a quarter mile. It seemed like the most effective way to pass was to apply a healthy amount of bumper to bumper in traffic. On the other hand, fans were into it, and anytime you walked around the perimeter of the track from Turn 4 to Turn 3, everyone was having a good time. It was theater.
There were people online who defaulted to ‘this isn’t racing’ and ‘this is a circus,’ and yeah, that was kind of the point.
Once upon a time, before stage racing and double-file restarts became the norm, this was the kind of event where wacky rules that places entertainment over racing purity was the point. A case could be made for a little less of that in the 36 races that count, but certainly not this one.
The Bowman Gray Clash was everything The Winston used to be before every so-called gimmick rule made its way into practically every race.
But anyway, the craziest thing happened over the first 100 laps of the Cook Out Clash main event. An actual, honest to goodness old-school NASCAR short track race broke out. Like literally, this was the racing that all of us have been wanting from a track like Martinsville over the first three years of the NextGen era.
Quarter miles like Bowman Gray and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum are the best kinds of short tracks for this car because it has a wide contact patch, a lot of tire fall off and no aero push whatsoever.
There was a point during the first 100 laps of The Clash, where you could start making the case to take the spring Martinsville race to Bowman Gray for a points race. The format for a points race would have to be sorted out, of course, but the racing was that professional, exciting and compelling.
Sure, the final 100 laps did not quite match the first but that was a byproduct, again, of the professionalism of those racing for the win. Ryan Blaney wasn’t going to wreck Chase Elliott to win a non-points exhibition race but imagine if that race featured a playoff spot on the line?
Again, it became worth the thought because the racing was actually that good.
By the end of 200 laps, whatever qualms there were about Cup Series drivers racing at Bowman Gray being a shit show were thoroughly quelled. Remember, the actual Clash shit show is what the final couple of races at Daytona became.
So what does this mean for the future?
It’s hard to actually see a scenario where Bowman Gray legitimately becomes a points paying race and it’s also equally challenging to see the Clash staying there for years to come. NASCAR just has much larger aims for its preseason event.
NASCAR wants to take its product overseas in the pursuit of expanding its audience into a more global group and Brazil very much seems on the table. Mexico City was last year before a points-paying weekend for Cup and Xfinity was put together Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
From a logistical standpoint, January is the only place on the calendar to ship cars overseas before the weekly grind of the regular season. We know they have explored Great Britain, Australia, China and the Middle East over the years.
But that doesn’t mean an event at a grassroots venues like Bowman Gray cannot continue to flourish.
These tracks get a Cup Series date, an injection of television money to modernize the property, and the next generation of racers have safe and clean tracks in which to develop their skills.
“I really like the opportunity here at Bowman Gray where I don’t know what the budgets are,” Busch said. “I don’t know if it’s three million, five million, seven million, 10 million, I don’t know. The fact of us going somewhere to reinvest in the future for other racing and local level racers – to be able to see a better venue, to go and enjoy and bring their sponsors and have fun and race and compete, is only going to benefit from the top.
“Bringing that down here to Bowman Gray, seeing the upgrades here, looking at other tracks around the county we could do some of the same stuff. There are short tracks in Florida that are cool. Pensacola is one of them that would really benefit from this opportunity. There’s a couple in Alabama that would really benefit from this opportunity. That could be a really cool thing down the road that this continues to float around. Return on investment? I don’t know, but I think the return on investment is the younger generations and the younger racers that want to be somebody and get to race at a cool place, and then can move up the ladder and someday, one day go back and race at their home track as a pro.”
Bingo.
Ryan Preece wants to see the Clash at New Smyrna Speedway as part of Speedweeks someday.
But really, that’s what the identity of the All-Star Race could be if the identity of The Clash becomes this forward-facing event like the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or international showcases.
Full circle, no matter what the future of the Clash is, this past weekend was a tremendous amount of fun, was the kind of thing that made us all fall in love with NASCAR racing as children and has to be considered a success.
The racing product in the main event turned out to be tremendously professional, but even the parts that were ridiculous theater, was on brand to both Bowman Gray and exhibition events like the Busch Clash or The Winston.
Fun was the point and a lot of it was had at The Madhouse.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.