NASCAR race gets a location change for the 2025 season

For more than four decades, the annual NASCAR Cup Series preseason Busch Light Clash exhibition race was contested at Daytona International Speedway ahead of the Daytona 500.

That did theoretically remain true in 2021, when the race was moved to the Daytona Beach, Florida venue's interior 14-turn, 3.57-mile (5.745-kilometer) road course from the high-banked four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval.

But in 2022, NASCAR completely changed things up by moving the exhibition race to the home of the USC Trojans football team, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The series raced on a purpose-built 0.25-mile (0.402-kilometer) flat track inside the iconic stadium for three years.

NASCAR is once again set to race inside a stadium on a quarter-mile oval in 2025. But it won't be the venue in Southern California.

Instead, for the first time in more than five decades, NASCAR is set to run at Bowman Gray Stadium, with the 2025 Busch Light Clash scheduled to take place on Sunday, February 2, two weeks before the official season-opening Daytona 500.

The Winston-Salem, North Carolina venue, which served as the inspiration for the track that was constructed inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum each year from 2022 to 2024, has seen multiple tests with the Next Gen car and has long been rumored as a possible candidate for a NASCAR return, and now it is set to happen with the annual preseason exhibition race next year.

The Cup Series ran 29 races at the track from 1958 to 1971, but it hasn't been back on the calendar since. Bobby Allison is the most recent winner.

The venue did host select K&N Pro Series East and Whelen Southern Modified Tour races up until 2016, and a number of active Cup Series drivers had a chance to compete in some of those events.

The Busch Light Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium is set to lead off Fox's broadcast coverage in year number one of the new NASCAR media rights deal. Like the Daytona 500, the race is set to be broadcast live on Fox as opposed to Fox Sports 1.