{"id":460639,"date":"2026-02-07T23:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460639\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T23:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:40:10","slug":"nascar-insiders-react-to-sleet-changing-entire-dynamic-of-clash-race-falling-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/460639\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insiders react to sleet changing entire dynamic of Clash, race falling short"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR<\/a>\u2018s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray on Wednesday was an adventurous affair, and not just because the race was postponed three days due the impacts of a severe winter weather system. Even on Wednesday night during the Clash, the sport had to deal with sleet on the track.<\/p>\n

The first 100 or so laps of the race went fairly smoothly, though there were a decent number of cautions. Still, it was what you would have expected.<\/p>\n

Then things got funky. The Athletic\u2019s Jeff Gluck explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019m tweeting about the halfway break I\u2019m looking in my phone and there\u2019s moisture on my phone, and it\u2019s not me spitting on my screen or something,\u201d Gluck said on The Teardown<\/a> podcast. \u201cI\u2019m looking up and you\u2019re like, \u2018Uh oh,\u2019 and you start to see it in the lights and it was more and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it started to get that crisp, pinginess. Not snow, but like that icy little pellets on your face. You\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, it is sleeting right now.\u2019 Then you could see it and you\u2019re like, \u2018OK, well that might be a little bit more than just like a little rainshower or something. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re going to do with this, because it\u2019s almost freezing already.\u2019 That\u2019s really when the race changed to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second half of the race was mired by a whole slew of cautions. Drivers couldn\u2019t quite figure out how to race for speed while keeping from sliding around the track at the Clash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first 100 laps were fine, but then there was that break and you\u2019re like, \u2018Goodness,’\u201d Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic said. \u201cIt was supposed to be a 10-minute break and they\u2019re going to change tires, OK, get back out there. But that extended because of the weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they put them on the race track and they\u2019re circling and circling. You\u2019ve got wet weather tires. It felt like one of those situations we\u2019ve seen at New Hampshire and some other places where NASCAR\u2019s kind of in this weird in-between of like, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019ve got the wet-weather package but we\u2019re just not 100% confident or feeling good about it to a point we want to go with it, so we\u2019re just going to kind of hope.\u2019 And that\u2019s what they did, is they hoped that this thing was going to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone had a different feel for how to race things after a combination of light rain and sleet hit the track. NASCAR did its best to clear the track for the second half of the Clash, but some of it was inevitable.<\/p>\n

Luckily, things weren\u2019t so bad that NASCAR couldn\u2019t finish the race. Ryan Preece took home the win after taking charge later on.<\/p>\n

But the Clash probably wasn\u2019t quite what NASCAR was looking for in terms of attracting new viewers. It was choppy and a bit disjointed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a big front,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cAnd eventually it cleared, but it just was\u2026 again, I go back to the TV thing, if you\u2019re watching this at home, you\u2019re like why are these cars circling, why aren\u2019t they racing? It didn\u2019t help, they weren\u2019t wrong in what they said. They were right. Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer were saying like, \u2018Oh, these guys can race.\u2019 You were hearing it from drivers in the car. Some drivers were saying, \u2018Hey, we can race.\u2019 Other drivers were saying you can\u2019t. And so if you\u2019re at home watching this you\u2019re like, \u2018What\u2019s going on here?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just this weird in between and if this race is about getting people\u2019s attention and getting people excited for NASCAR and for what\u2019s to come, the Daytona 500 in a couple weeks, like that, this, the way circumstances came together is not it. It\u2019s unfortunate, and I don\u2019t know how you change it other than like a venue or something like that. You saw what happened in LA a couple years ago. It just sometimes doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s just Mother Nature was a bear and it just worked against NASCAR in the worst way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR\u2018s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray on Wednesday was an adventurous affair, and not just because the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-460639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460639","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=460639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}