WINSTON, SALEM, N.C. — A bomb cyclone over North Carolina forced NASCAR to push its preseason exhibition race to Wednesday night because the snow-covered roads are too dangerous for teams and fans to get to historic Bowman-Gray Stadium.
The Clash had been scheduled to run Sunday night and has now been postponed twice with a schedule adjustment because of the intense snowfall that blanketed the area. NASCAR first condensed the race into a one-day, Sunday-only show — that decision was made Thursday — then pushed the race to Monday, with that call made Saturday morning.
NASCAR said Sunday it was moving the event to Wednesday evening “due to the impacts of historic winter weather across the North Carolina region.”
The race is now scheduled to run one week before qualifying for the 2026 regular-season opener for the Cup Series — the Daytona 500, which is run at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, where the Clash was held from 1979 through 2022.
The Clash then went to a temporary track inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for three seasons, then moved to its grass-roots anchor on the quarter-mile track at Bowman Gray last year.
Its first running there was a success, but the second try has been interrupted by the bomb cyclone, known to meteorologists as an intense, rapidly strengthening weather system. It contributed to nearly a foot of snow in and around Charlotte, which is both North Carolina’s largest city and home base for the majority of the NASCAR Cup Series teams.
The snowfall ranks one of the top-five snow events of all time in Charlotte, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with weather prediction center in College Park, Maryland.