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Syndication: The Columbus Dispatch May 1, 2024 Columbus, OH, USA NASCAR, Motorsport, USA legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks to media following the Memorial Tournament Legends Luncheon at the Ohio Union. Earnhardt emceed the event. Columbus , EDITORIAL USE ONLY PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xAdamxCairns/ColumbusxDispatchx USATSI_23161485
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Syndication: The Columbus Dispatch May 1, 2024 Columbus, OH, USA NASCAR, Motorsport, USA legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks to media following the Memorial Tournament Legends Luncheon at the Ohio Union. Earnhardt emceed the event. Columbus , EDITORIAL USE ONLY PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xAdamxCairns/ColumbusxDispatchx USATSI_23161485
NASCAR’s pre-season Clash is a dying event, or at least some would say so. The race was historically held on the Daytona International Speedway, but recently, NASCAR experimented and moved the Clash to different venues due to the steep decline in viewership. Many claimed that the sport was overusing Daytona. However, the recent Bowman Gray experiment doesn’t seem to have gone too well, either, as one NASCAR insider just echoed Dale Jr’s comments on the race and its future.
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The problem with Clash
Traditionally, the pre-season Clash, then called the Busch Clash, was held at Daytona. However, this bored the fans after a point, which was exactly what Kenny Wallace pointed out, discussing Dale Jr’s comments on the event: “Dale Jr. is like, ‘okay, look, we left the Daytona because nobody was in the grandstands. It got really bad.’ So it was like, okay, we bored Daytona out. Nobody cares anymore.”
Being in an experimental phase in 2021, NASCAR then moved the race to the LA Memorial Coliseum. This was a historic feat as the sport managed to turn a football field into a racing track.
“I thought the races at Daytona were exciting,” Wallace added, “but there was nobody in the grandstands, so they said, let’s move it. So for all the right reasons, with Fox TV, they all went to the Coliseum. And my God, they pulled off something unbelievable. They put a racetrack on a football field. And here you all go again. ‘This is no good. I don’t like it. They’re not going to be able to race.’ But we were just at Daytona, and you guys didn’t like it.”
It was quite apparent that the drivers found it hard to race on the quarter-mile track. There was hardly any opportunity to overtake, and the smallest of mistakes could turn the race into a wreckfest.
“Coffee with Kenny”
Has the @NASCAR CLASH lost its luster? Do we need to keep holding this event? pic.twitter.com/thV74ympEV
— Kenny Wallace (@Kenny_Wallace) February 4, 2026
Even when NASCAR moved to Bowman Gray Stadium last year, similar issues remained. In fact, the viewership kept dropping because of some changes in the schedule, and this raised an important question: should the race be scrapped?
“Dale Jr. didn’t say that, but that’s what I say. It’s a preview before the Daytona 500. But to me, the preview before the Daytona 500 is like the twin one fifties, right? But Dale Jr. is right. Nothing has moved the needle. Does this race need to go away? Is the preview before the Daytona 500? Is that the twin one fifties?”
As mentioned earlier, the Clash is like a warm-up race for the Daytona 500. But the Twin 150s are also a part of the Daytona weekend, which feels rather redundant when compared with the Clash, as both of these seemingly serve the same purpose.
Should the Clash be scrapped?
In 2022, the Clash reported about 4.28 million viewers on FOX. However, the race didn’t have the best reception. The following year, viewership declined steeply to 3.65 million, and in 2024, the number dropped to just 1.5 million because of a schedule change due to weather.
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These trends are not good. Although the Twin 150s have had fewer people watching, the numbers have stayed constant through the years. Moreover, with the issues that the race is currently facing at Bowman Gray because of the bad weather, the future of this event, at least on this track, seems to be in question.
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Bowman Gray Stadium (via NASCAR.com)
All events scheduled for the 31st of January were canceled. The Clash itself was postponed from Sunday to Wednesday. This caused a great deal of trouble for the fans, and at the same time, the issues from previous years about competitive racing remained.
As NASCAR is moving towards more traditional ways of racing, would it make more sense to drop the pre-season Clash and put more effort into making the Twin 150s more fan-accessible?
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