WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. \u2014 NASCAR typically sticks to warm-weather climates in the early months of its Cup Series season, which has historically made snow-outs a rarity.<\/p>\n
But a winter storm paralyzed much of North Carolina on Saturday, forcing NASCAR\u2019s season-opening Clash exhibition race to shift to Monday night (at least in the current best-case scenario). Plows and road treatments are not as common in North Carolina compared to the Northeast or Midwest, and the heavy snow that fell Saturday will still be on the ground through next week.<\/p>\n
Even if the roads are cleared early enough on Monday for NASCAR drivers and team members to make the 60- to 90-minute drive from their Charlotte-area homes to Winston-Salem\u2019s Bowman Gray Stadium, they\u2019ll need to pack their warmest winter gear. When the green flag flies on Monday night, it could mark the start of the coldest race in NASCAR\u2019s nearly 80-year history.<\/p>\n
Richmond Raceway\u2019s 1990 spring race had a race-time temperature of 31 degrees, according to NASCAR Insights. Monday night is expected to be around 30, with temperatures dipping into the mid-20s during the race.<\/p>\n
Drivers are usually too hot inside their boxy, sealed-off stock cars and spend the summer wearing electric cooling shirts to lower their core body temperatures. But this time, with driving gloves instead of winter gloves and racing shoes instead of snow boots, there\u2019s a chance their extremities could feel the chill.<\/p>\n
The problem is none of them have raced in weather quite like this, so it\u2019s hard to know how the conditions will affect drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you even do?\u201d 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick said, referring to equipment adjustments. \u201cIf you\u2019re wrong, you\u2019re going to be really hot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reddick said he thought about layering up with his undergarments when the forecast was scheduled to be in the teens for the originally scheduled Sunday night race, but even that would have been a challenge. Each driver\u2019s seat is precisely molded to the body of its driver (\u201cit\u2019s a really solid fit,\u201d Reddick said), so any extra layers might make for a tight squeeze.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never been cold enough to layer up in the car or even think about it, so I guess I\u2019ll see how cold I am first and then go from there,\u201d Reddick said.<\/p>\n
But his peers didn\u2019t think it would be an issue. Defending Cup Series champion Kyle Larson said a stock car is \u201cbasically like an oven,\u201d and even though he\u2019d never raced in conditions quite this cold, he anticipated being plenty warm once the race begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I think it\u2019ll feel fine for us inside the car,\u201d Larson said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if you still break somewhat of a sweat in there, just because of all the temps internally (from engine heat and other parts). It\u2019s not windy in there because we\u2019re going so slow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel for the crews and mechanics and fans and NASCAR officials \u2014 everybody who is there outside in the cold.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s perhaps the trickiest part, since team members will be tasked with working on the cars before practice and then again in the period between the qualifying events and the race itself.<\/p>\n
Stock cars don\u2019t have antifreeze and there\u2019s no sheltered garage area at Bowman Gray \u2014 a football stadium used by Winston-Salem State University that happens to have a historic quarter-mile racetrack around the field\u2019s perimeter. So each team will need to make sure the fluids in their cars don\u2019t freeze while off the track, regardless of how warm the drivers might be when they eventually climb in.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the unknown of what the weather could do to the track conditions and grip levels that drivers are accustomed to \u2014 particularly when the drivers are going slowly under a yellow flag caution period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tires might get slick or the track might get slick,\u201d Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell said. \u201cFactors that don\u2019t normally come into play, such as tire temperatures, would probably be really the only thing that\u2019s unique to these circumstances from our seat.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the second year of NASCAR running its preseason race in North Carolina, after a long history in Daytona Beach, Fla. (where snow was never a concern) and a few years in Los Angeles, where incoming heavy rain before the 2024 race drove a late decision to move the event up by one day.<\/p>\n
NASCAR knew Winston-Salem would be somewhat of a risk, but got lucky last year. Now? Not so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn year one, we hit the jackpot,\u201d said NASCAR\u2019s Justin Swilling, who is in charge of the Clash on behalf of the sanctioning body. \u201cThis year, I wouldn\u2019t say we\u2019ve lost the bet, but we rolled the dice, and unfortunately, Mother Nature didn\u2019t want us to stay on schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. \u2014 NASCAR typically sticks to warm-weather climates in the early months of its Cup Series season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82],"class_list":["post-447187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}