NASCAR's Cup Series takes on Bowman Gray Stadium on Feb. 1-2 for the Clash exhibition race. This historic event, while exciting for fans, includes some logistical issues that will force NASCAR to make some procedure changes.
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The issue is that the Cup haulers and all of the technical equipment will not fit in the garage area at Bowman Gray Stadium. NASCAR will address this by holding the pre-race technical inspections at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which sits an hour away.
Once the cars pass inspection, they will be sealed up and loaded for the trip to the quarter-mile short track known as "The Madhouse." Teams will not have access to the cars until Saturday, Feb. 1, as they prepare for on-track sessions.
According to NASCAR Media, the inspection will take place on Thursday, Jan. 30. The haulers will make the trip to Bowman Gray Stadium and park on Friday, Jan. 31. The teams will have an opportunity to unload behind the fieldhouse and set up equipment.
Another change for the weekend involves post-race inspection. The officials will conduct this inspection with only scales and shock equipment. The Optical Scanning Station (OSS) used to analyze chassis and bodies will spend the weekend at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina. Officials will use the OSS to inspect any backup cars — if needed — on Sunday.
"We take a massive footprint with our haulers, with all our technical equipment as well as the NASCAR series support haulers that are required, so certainly we had to look at it a little differently on what we're going to do for inspections and how we're going to do it," said Cup Series director Brad Moran, per NASCAR.
"Our good friends from Charlotte Motor Speedway worked with us, so we appreciate (Speedway Motorsports executives) Marcus Smith and Steve Swift putting the facility up for our use. It's all pre-wired and it's ready to go, obviously. We go there twice a year, and what we're going to do is something a little different than what we do on a normal event."
