"This was a homerun": Insider praises NASCAR's 'great job' as Chase Elliott wraps successful Clash weekend

NASCAR Insiders Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck recently shared their takes on the Clash at Bowman Gray. In 2024, NASCAR had announced that the exhibition race which kicks off the year-long season, would be hosted by Bowman Gray Stadium, a historic racetrack in Winston-Salem.

The racetrack hadn't hosted a Cup race since 1971, and NASCAR was coming off of three years at the LA Coliseum with the Clash. But over the course of the weekend, the event turned out to be a success on all fronts for the sport as arguably its most popular driver, Chase Elliott, took the checkered flag in front of a packed 'Madhouse'.

Speaking about the weekend on "The Teardown podcast", Jordan Bianchi shared his thoughts. He said:

"This was a homerun. NASCAR did a great job with this weekend. A lot of questions coming into it, whether it could work, how it could work, how the racing would be like, logistically etc. Across the board from everyone I've talked to, from what I witnessed, this was a home run weekend. It was an electric crowd. It was a fun crowd. It was spirited. The racing was good," Bianchi said. [1:14 onwards]

Bianchi mentioned that at times, the racing was "typical" Bowman Gray racing but there were moments here and there of "really good classic short track racing". He claimed that he doesn't know how anyone can objectively look at the Clash weekend and conclude that it wasn't a success.

Having said that, he admitted that the last 20 or 30 laps of the 200-lap main event on Sunday weren't all that exciting. But despite that, it was still "a really, really" good race in his opinion.

Jeff Gluck claims Bowman Gray had the hardcore NASCAR fans at the Clash

Adding to Jordan Bianchi's sentiment, the co-host of The Teardown, Jeff Gluck, claimed that he didn't hear a negative thing from anyone about the Clash.

He admitted that heading into the weekend, his expectations were "sort of muted", if not low.

"It didn't feel like it didn't have a lot of hype going in. Oddly, even though, it was coming back here, the anticipation levels seemed a little weird. When we went to LA, there was so much anticipation, especially for the first couple of years, there was this sort of this magic of being in the Coliseum. There was just this awe factor. And Bowman Gray has been here. So you're like, 'Okay, Cup cars at Bowman Gray? That'd be pretty cool.' But what I think I underestimated.....," Gluck described. [2:10]

Gluck claimed that while he knew it would be a sold-out crowd at Bowman Gray, he underestimated what the NASCAR fans would bring to the atmosphere. Gluck mentioned that he had never been to a NASCAR race where so much of the crowd in the racetrack was "so into the race".

To Gluck, the fans at Bowman Gray were "the hardcore fans" of NASCAR considering how much they were invested in it.

He recalled how everyone around him would cheer and give big reactions for every pass in the race irrespective of what position it was for, which added to the "intense" atmosphere.