Ben Kennedy has always held a certain fondness towards Bowman Gray Stadium.
Back when the great grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France was a 21-year-old development racer in the old K&N Pro Series East, he said the race he coveted the most was the annual summer stop at The Madhouse in Winston-Salem.
He won it in 2013.
That same year, over a spaghetti media luncheon at Five Flags Speedway in Florida, Kennedy mused that it would be a lot of fun to see the Cup Series race at the site of its first-ever pavement event (1949) again someday.
A decade later, well into a career as an executive specializing in venue development, Kennedy kept that goal in his back pocket and developed a version of it when spearheading The Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
That ran its course after three years and now NASCAR has now followed up a showcase in the coveted Southern California market for one that contains its largest weekly television audience, the North Carolina Triad.
The Clash is moving to The Stadium to open the 2025 season on February 2.
“It’s a celebration of history and the evolution of our schedule in that we are going to places like Los Angeles, Chicago and some major metropolitan markets with different track concepts that we’ve never done before,” Kennedy told Sportsnaut on Saturday at the official announcement.
“But we also have the opportunity to celebrate our history and celebrate our roots, like taking our All-Star Race to North Wilkesboro. This is going to be another example of how we celebrate our past and future.
“This race is going to feel like what the racing here has been for the past several decades, and that is going to be an important part of our team’s mission, that it feels like nostalgic Bowman Gray Stadium.”
NASCAR took over the lease to promote the annual summer weekly local racing program here this season but the gears had been turning to bring the pre-season exhibition back to the grassroots for several years.
In fact, Kennedy says NASCAR’s current schedule revolution began in 2019, and that is when Bowman Gray Stadium first came up in earnest.
“We’ve talked about everywhere under the sun,” Kennedy said. “We’ve had these conversations since like the summer of 2019. We had talked about Bowman Gray for a number of years and how great it would be to bring an event here.
“That started to pick up traction earlier this year once we picked up the lease at Bowman Gray and it just became a natural extension of that.
“We are really trying to place a big focus on the our NASCAR regional program, everything that encompasses and this is also an opportunity to promote our 2025 season before we usually start to pick up steam with it, which is like March or April.”
Kennedy’s reverence for Bowman Gray Stadium extends to protecting its culture and identity.
When NASCAR took over the lease this season, fans were concerned they would dilute its roughneck racing style. They were concerned NASCAR would shy away from the fighting and theatrics. That hasn’t been the case at all and that starts with Kennedy.
That reverence will extend to The Clash too.
“When we took on the lease at the start of this year, we said from before we opened the gate that our number one priority is that we leave this place in a really good place and to operate it as is,” Kennedy said. “The great part is that Gray Garrison and the family (that has promoted the track for decades) have been side-by-side with us every week.
“We have a team from NASCAR that comes out here every Saturday night and we want to learn from them as much as they can learn from us. We need to protect everything that makes Bowman Gray special and it’s been great to have the Garrisons continue to be part of that.”
Around $9 million has been spent on the facility between NASCAR and Winston Salem but it hasn’t changed the identity of the track this season. The racing is still hand-scored from the tower but a Cup race will probably require a transponder loop of some kind.
“Our cars are big and heavy, with a lot of power, so we probably need to make some changes but again, we don’t want to change anything that makes this place special or things you view as being unique to Bowman Gray Stadium,” he said.
So, the big question is, in this era where NASCAR is trying to figure out how much fighting and using a car for retaliation is good or bad, what does a successful Clash at Bowman Gray look like?
“I think a successful clash is, first a packed house,” Kennedy said.
Right now, that’s about 17,000 but additional seating could get that to over 20,000.
“We want to see a ton of energy and great racing at the end of the day,” Kennedy added. “We see that every Saturday night here, some incredible racing, and we’ve seen some similar shows the past three years at the (LA) Coliseum from a racing style perspective.
“We might see some tempers flare, some high energy on that Sunday so success again, is a packed house, a lot of energy, a lot of people watching around the world and an amazing show for the fans.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.