Entering the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, two tracks that were on the 2025 calendar were no longer on the 2026 calendar: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, which hosted just one race before its removal, and the Chicago Street Course, which became the series' first ever street circuit when it debuted in 2023.
Chicagoland Speedway has returned in place of the street course, marking its first time on the schedule since 2020 (and, assuming it actually hosts a race this time around, its first time actually hosting a Cup Series race since 2019).
Meanwhile, NASCAR kept the street circuit trend going with a new race at Naval Base Coronado in place of the Mexico event.
Now here we are just days away (and it would be just one day away if not for Saturday's postponement) from the first scheduled on-track action of the year, and the number of tracks removed from the calendar might very well already be doubled.
Earlier this week, it emerged that the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval playoff race, which has been on the calendar since 2018, is set to shift back to the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval, a move that fans had been calling for ever since the novelty of the Roval wore off after the Next Gen era began in 2022.
Now Bowman Gray Stadium could be facing a similar fate.
The Madhouse was a popular addition to the 2025 calendar as the host of the preseason Cook Out Clash exhibition race, and the event was a hit. However, a race in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in early February was always chancy weather-wise, and while the 2025 edition went off without a hitch, this year's has already been altered.
The practice and qualifying sessions around the four-turn, 0.25-mile (0.402-kilometer) oval that were scheduled to take place on Saturday were postponed to Sunday due to forecasts calling for up to a foot of snow. The four 25-lap heat races were canceled altogether.
Sunday is now scheduled to feature practice and qualifying, but no heat races; the top 20 qualifiers are set to advance to the main event. There is still set to be a 75-lap Last Chance Qualifier to send two other drivers to the 200-lap main event. One driver is still set to qualify via the 2025 point standings provisional to create a 23-driver race.
Key words: "scheduled to".
In a worst-case weather scenario, it's not hard to imagine the race not happening, or possible being shifted to later in the week; NASCAR does still have off next weekend before the schedule shifts to Speedweeks and the official season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. As of now, it seems like anything is on the table, including a full cancellation.
With NASCAR now managing the operations for the historic venue, it's highly unlikely that a decision would be made to avoid the venue altogether moving forward, but you've got to question the logic behind running a race in that part of the country at this time of year.
Sure, there are definitely far worse options available weather-wise in terms of likelihood of having a foot of snow on the ground than North Carolina, but this latest development has led for more calls than ever to simply move the Clash to where it had always been held prior to 2021: Daytona International Speedway.
Of course, the race was held at Daytona in 2021 as well, but it was held at the track's road course to switch things up after 42 years on the oval.
The move to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was met with criticism (as expected) in 2022, but the race was deemed a success and returned in 2023. But after forecasts of torrential rain resulted in the race being moved up by a full day in 2024, NASCAR shifted the race to Bowman Gray Stadium.
And now a blizzard is potentially looming, and one year after there were zero weather-related postponements across all three NASCAR national series, NASCAR could end up having a snow-out before the 2026 season even officially gets underway.
Fitting. Just one question: does the "Vortex Theory" apply to snow?
Practice and qualifying are now set to be shown live on Fox Sports 2 at 2:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 1. Again, the heat races have been canceled. Fox is set to pick up coverage at 6:00 p.m. ET of both the Last Chance Qualifier and the main event. Start a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss any of the action from Bowman Gray Stadium (that is, if it actually happens)!