NASCAR is back, old-school style, as 2025 opens with a return to the “Mecca of Madhouse” for Sunday night’s preseason Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.

The Winston-Salem quarter-mile notorious for its rough-and-tumble racing style and numerous fights will host its first Cup Series event since 1971 with the non-points exhibition race.

“I think it’s great that the location is changing, and I think it should change every year,” Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman said. “We have the capability of doing it. Continuing to evolve it and do different things is kind of what NASCAR has become all about. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds.”

The unofficial kickoff to the new season was held at Daytona International Speedway from 1979 to 2021 as the warm-up act to the Daytona 500. NASCAR stepped outside the box in 2022 and moved it across the country to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was transformed from a football stadium into a temporary short track for three seasons.

Last year’s rain-impacted Clash forced NASCAR into an unprecedented scramble to cram all on-track activities into one day — resulting in a financial bloodbath for the sanctioning body.

The racing at the Coliseum was by no means good as drivers struggled to string together multiple green-flag laps, resulting in caution-heavy crash fests that was anything but entertaining. So NASCAR decided to return to its simpler roots and stay closer to home in 2025.

But racing purists love historic Bowman Gray and the Clash sold out its 17,000 seats two months ago. The facility is owned by the city, is home of Winston-Salem State University’s football team, and was built in 1937 as a public works project to provide jobs during the Great Depression. The first event at the new stadium was a 1938 football game between Wake Forest and Duke.

The first Cup race was held in 1958 and won by Bob Welborn. Rex White’s six victories is the Cup Series record. Hall of Famer Glen Wood won four times — and logged a total of 29 victories across all divisions — and his sons remember the fun they had watching Daddy race at one of the most volatile circuits in NASCAR.

Wood Brothers Racing fittingly kicks off its 75th season of NASCAR competition with this weekend’s return to Bowman Gray.

“There were probably a dozen people that went every Saturday night and you sat at the same place. You’d go get french fries with vinegar on them. We couldn’t have peanuts. I wanted some, but they wouldn’t let you because of the (superstitious) peanut thing,” team co-owner Eddie Wood said. “Bowman Gray is really special to me.”