According to NASCAR, the snow-delayed NASCAR race took two hours and 20 minutes to complete at the quarter-mile flat track.
The average speed of the race was just 21.39 mph (34.42 km/h). For comparison, a flying lap of Bowman Gray Stadium has an average speed of 63 mph (101 km/h).
The event itself took more than three hours to complete, accounting for the mid-race weather delay.
This year’s Clash eclipsed the 2023 Clash, which was held on a temporary quarter-mile oval inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
That race was shorter at 37.5 miles for 150 laps. It featured 16 cautions, took one hour and 43 minutes to complete, and had an average speed of just 21.83 mph (35.13 km/h).
Given the nature of how small the circuit is at Bowman Gray Stadium, laps under caution did not count towards the 50-mile race distance.
With a whopping 17 cautions across the day, there was just an hour of green flag running.
The race got off to a surprisingly speedy start, with just three cautions inside the first 100 laps. However, when the heavens opened, all hell broke loose.
The resumption of action after the mid-race break was delayed by inclement weather as sleet and rain fell.
Later in the race, amid fears that the field would run out of fuel, NASCAR allowed everyone to refuel, causing another delay.
It was a controversial call, with some crew chiefs frustrated that they had made the right call while others had not.
Several drivers were caught out. Hendrick Motorsports duo Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott ran out of fuel on track.
Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch and Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing each pitted before the call to bring the full field in for non-competitive pit stops on Lap 165.
“It’s the first time we’ve run that engine in an actual race with the higher horsepower, for one,” said NASACR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran.
“So was our data totally accurate that we went into the race with? We believe it is. We’re still going to go through all of that.
“So what we were managing from our side is that we had way more cautions than we’ve ever had.
“We don’t have a pit road that you could just allow fueling at any time. We don’t have fire protection at every station, so just multiple layers.
“We were getting reports, where we obviously saw some of them run out of fuel, starting with (Larson) and we weren’t sure if there was a pickup issue; we didn’t have that information at the time so we allowed them to fuel.”
Moran said NASCAR did not want to have multiple cars running out of fuel and that becoming the story of the race.
The NASCAR Cup Series gets underway in earnest with Daytona 500 on February 16.
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