NASCAR: Two surprise drivers primed for upset Clash victory?

After 42 years at the Daytona International Speedway oval, NASCAR's season-opening exhibition race, known as the Clash, is now on its fourth different track in six years.

In 2021, the race was moved from the Daytona oval to the infield road course, before then moving all the way to Los Angeles to the famed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where it remained for three years.

Now the Cup Series is off to historic Bowman Gray Stadium, a quarter-mile flat oval in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that has hosted grassroots racing for decades. In fact, this will be NASCAR's first race at the track in over 50 years!

What was typically an event specifically for NASCAR's best drivers and teams to put on a show to raise hype for the upcoming Daytona 500 has now become a fun, unique, and open-to-all event to kickstart the season's festivities. And while the race does feature a heat racing, knockout-style format, and a chaotic ruleset that allows only green flag laps to count, the sport's stars have still shone bright.

Since Erik Jones won the complete wreckfest race in 2020, the final edition of the event on the Daytona oval, the winners of the race have been Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr., and Denny Hamlin, who is second all-time with four Clash victories.

While the cream always rises to the top at the Clash, this year's race has a major chance of an upset.

Given the fact that the Clash has been an All-Star-like event for most of its history, upset winners have not been a thing.

Insert Tim Brown and Burt Myers, and now there's a serious chance.

You're probably asking, "who are those two guys?", and for that, we wouldn't blame you. Brown and Myers have made just two combined starts across NASCAR's top three national series, both of which came in the Truck Series.

Brown has had success in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Series in his career, scoring seven wins, 53 top five finishes, and 75 top 10 finishes, with an average finish of 6.2 in 94 starts. While Myers hasn't had as much success there, he's had a very good Southern Modified Tour career, scoring 19 wins, 77 top five finishes, and 117 top 10 finishes, with an average finish of 6.1 in 139 starts.

The big thing to consider, though, is the pair's success at Bowman Gray Stadium at various different levels. Brown and Myers are the two winningest drivers in the track's history, combining for a total of 198 wins at the track. Brown has won 101 races and Myers has won 97. Additionally, the two have won 23 of the track's 25 most recent championships, with Brown again having won slightly more with a track-record 12, while Myers has 11, including last year's.

Brown and Myers will be driving less than ideal machinery in this weekend's Clash event, with Brown set to drive the No. 15 Rick Ware Racing Ford and Myers set to drive the No. 50 Team AmeriVet Chevrolet.

Along with having zero NASCAR Cup Series experience, and the fact that 16 of the 39 cars on the entry list won't even be in the main event, their chances appear to be slim – on paper, at least.

Home field advantage and experience with this style of racing will play to their strengths.

When the Clash took place on the Daytona oval for all those years, it was almost always exactly what you'd expect. When the race moved to the Daytona road course in 2021, there weren't any certified "road course ringers" in the field who could make any noise, nor was there a heat racing format that could shake up the grid and even send big names home.

Even though that was a prominent feature at the Coliseum, that was a temporary track with which nobody had prior experience, meaning there were no natural advantages.

For the 2025 Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, however, these factors could combine for the perfect storm in the cases of Brown and Myers. While these two drivers have turned thousands and thousands of laps around this tight track and won countless races and championships there, a good batch of drivers on the grid have not turned a single lap there, and for the select handful who have, it hasn't been for a long, long time.

Hamlin has an extensive history in Winston-Salem, but he has not raced there since 2016, Chase Elliott, William Byron, and Justin Haley have not driven there since 2015, Alex Bowman and Daniel Suarez have been away since 2014, Ryan Preece most recently raced there in 2013, while Kyle Larson and Bubba Wallace haven't turned a lap at the circuit since 2012.

Most of the field's lack of recent experience at this very unique track, coupled with the immense experience of Brown and Myers in terms of the general speed, beating and banging racecraft, and chaotic race formats, bodes very well in the favor of the track veterans.

The Cup Series has been no stranger to upset winners in its history, especially over the last few seasons since the introduction of the Next Gen car. One could argue that there's actually been too much parity in the sport in recent years.

At FanDuel Sportsbook, Brown is listed at +5500, and Myers is listed at +7500. Full odds can be found here.

While there are no points on offer for this event, there is still a ton of pride and bragging rights. Should Brown or Myers take home the win against this stacked field of drivers in front of the home crowd, it would be one of the biggest upsets and feel-good stories from any race in NASCAR history.