WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — NASCAR will delay its lone preseason event by two additional days to Wednesday as North Carolina digs out one of its biggest snowstorms in years.
The Clash, originally scheduled for Sunday at Bowman Gray Stadium, will now run Wednesday on the historic quarter-mile track that doubles as the home football stadium for Winston-Salem State University.
Practice and qualifying is set for 1:30 p.m. ET. FOX coverage will start at 4:30 p.m. for the 75-lap last chance qualifying race, followed by the 200-lap main event at 6 p.m. ET.
The Winston-Salem area got eight inches of snow Saturday, while the area between there and Charlotte — where most of the teams are based — got 10-15 inches of snow. The race originally was postponed Saturday to Monday and while roads started to improve Sunday, the ability of teams (the crew members are home and not in the vicinity of the track) and fans to get to the track safely likely led to the decision.
The Charlotte area got 11 inches of snow, making it one of the top-five highest single-day snowfalls in the history of the city.
If this was a race during the season, NASCAR might have been more willing to do it without fans as teams would need to get to the next weekend’s event. But with on-track activity for the Daytona 500 not beginning until the following Wednesday (Feb. 11), NASCAR was not facing a hard decision as far as next-event logistics.
