WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Ryan Blaney was just a kid, no older than 10, the first time he raced at Bowman Gray Stadium. He remembers it being the coolest thing he’d ever done in motorsports.
He was in a Bandolero, an entry-level car designed for young drivers, racing in front of 17,000 fans that comprised the largest crowd he’d ever seen at a sporting event in which he was involved. The intensity was off the charts, both on the track and in the crowd.
“I was getting shot the bird by kids younger than me when I was 10,” Blaney, who won the NASCAR Cup Series championship for Team Penske in 2023, said early Saturday. “So it was like, ‘OK, that’s what this place is about, people like you or they don’t.’ And I don’t even think they didn’t like me. I’m 10 years old. What’s not to like about a 10-year-old? So that was pretty funny to me.”
That’s the expectation for the intensity level Saturday night and Sunday, when NASCAR returns to its roots to stage the preseason Clash exhibition at a venue it last brought its Cup Series cars to in 1971. As NASCAR moved on to bigger and more modern markets and facilities, Bowman Gray remained stuck in time. It is home to Winston-Salem State University’s football team, though it still serves as a quarter-mile track for weekly local racing.
The track is so small, NASCAR recently made a video highlighting what can and can’t fit inside Bowman Gray. Among things that could possibly be squeezed in? A Buc-ee’s convenience store and a Bass Pro Shops store were ruled “barely,” while the Team Penske race shop, at more than 300,000 square feet, was a definite no.