The NASCAR Cup Series will unofficially kick off its 2026 campaign with a trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium. 

After an offseason full of storylines, it’s finally time for the roar of engines to serenade race fans once again. Here are the three biggest questions going into the 48th running of the Clash and the second edition at Bowman Gray Stadium. 

1. How will the weather affect the weekend? 

This question can be split into two parts: will there be a race weekend in the first place, and if there is, how much of an effect will the below-freezing temperatures have on the race? 

Amazingly, NASCAR went through the entire 2025 season without a race in the top three series being postponed to a different day due to weather. It’s almost poetic, then, that the first NASCAR race weekend of 2026 could meet the fate of being moved to a different day. 

There is a 30 percent chance of snow flurries in Winston-Salem on both Saturday and Sunday, per Accuweather. Any snow or winter weather that comes through Winston-Salem next week won’t be anything as severe as much of the South has seen over the past several days, but still could change around the schedule. 

The good news for NASCAR on that front? Monday’s forecast looks clear, meaning that if the weather does postpone the race, it should be able to be run on Feb. 2 and still allow teams plenty of time to get ready to head down to Daytona. 

Regardless of precipitation, it will be bone-chilling in Winston-Salem throughout the race weekend, and as crew chief Rudy Fugle said on Monday, that could affect the cars in various ways.

2. What can be gleaned from 2025 Clash results? 

Cup Series teams have a pretty thin notebook on Bowman Gray, considering they’ve only raced at the 0.25-mile bullring once. But drivers and crew chiefs will still undoubtedly pore over advanced statistics, analytics and film to prepare for this weekend’s exhibition race.

That begs the question: what can teams really learn from 2025?

For starters, Bowman Gray saw the best drivers in the series run up front. That’s not exactly a mind-boggling occurrence, but it’s proof that the cream still rose to the top and chaos, as prevalent as it was and always will be at ‘The Madhouse’, didn’t reign supreme. Out of the top-four finishers in the 2025 Clash, three were champions and the other was a surefire future Hall of Famer in Denny Hamlin. 

There will be some chaos and carnage at Bowman Gray this weekend, but it’s a pretty good bet that the best teams and drivers will still find their way to the front. 

3. Will NASCAR’s offseason changes bring forth big ratings? 

To its credit, NASCAR had an offseason that should bring momentum for the sport into 2026. NASCAR returned to the “Chase” format to decide its champions and increased horsepower at all tracks shorter than 1.5 miles, including Bowman Gray, as well as road courses. Those moves won’t magically take the sport back to its mid-2000s level of popularity, but they are a return to a simpler, more nostalgic version of the sport that diehard fans and maybe even those who left the sport will appreciate. 

In 2025, the Cook Out Clash brought in 3.08 million viewers on Fox. Assuming the race runs as scheduled, it might not be foolish to predict an increase for the first (unofficial) race of the season as NASCAR enters a new season with some momentum behind it.