Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium

Parts of this article (those related to race rules since 2022) need to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (February 2024)

The Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium is an annual non-championship pre-season NASCAR Cup Series exhibition event held in February before the season-opening Daytona 500. The event was held each year at Daytona International Speedway from the race's inception in 1979 until 2021, after which it was moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2022 until 2024, when it was announced the Clash would be moved to Bowman Gray Stadium in 2025.^[1] Previously at Daytona, the race, along with the ARCA Menards Series' season-opening BRANDT 200, served as the kickoff events for Daytona Speedweeks. The event is one of two non-points races on the Cup Series schedule, the other being the NASCAR All-Star Race.

The event has been sponsored by Anheuser-Busch (which owns the Busch Beer and Budweiser brands) for most of its history. In 2013, Anheuser-Busch moved their Daytona Speedweeks race sponsorship to the Duel races after the departure of longtime Duel title sponsor Gatorade. Cup Series title sponsor Sprint became the title sponsor for this race, which was renamed from "The Shootout" to "The Unlimited" (to promote Sprint's cell phone unlimited plan). When Sprint left NASCAR after the 2016 season, Advance Auto Parts became the title sponsor in 2017 and the event was renamed to its original name of "The Clash". Advanced Auto Parts did not return as the title sponsor in 2020, which opened the door for Anheuser-Busch (which dropped its sponsorship of the Duel races in 2016) returned for a second stint as the title sponsor, and the Busch Clash name was brought back.

After being held on the Daytona oval for its entire history, the event was moved to the Daytona Road Course in 2021 as a result of logistics issues relating to both Super Bowl LV and the planned launch of the seventh-generation chassis (which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The following year, the event was moved out of Daytona International Speedway for the first time in its history, where it was held inside of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as part of launching the seventh-generation chassis. It was NASCAR's first race inside a sports stadium since a 1956 race at Soldier Field. The 2022 race also marked the first year that it was not an invitation-only event. For 2025, NASCAR announced the event will be moved to the Bowman Gray Stadium.^[2]