The excitement was high when NASCAR returned to the Bowman Gray Stadium. Why wouldn’t there be? The Cup Series took to ‘The Madhouse’ for the first time since 1971, signaling a long-awaited return to NASCAR’s roots. After a lengthy off-season that deprived fans of stock car racing action, there was great anticipation going into the pre-season opener. Watching the sport in its purest form at an iconic venue isn’t an opportunity motorsports fans were willing to let pass by.

However, Denny Hamlin believes the novelty of competing at a new venue also played a role in generating excitement. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver urged NASCAR to adopt a dynamic approach for the pre-season race to maintain the anticipation going forward.

Denny Hamlin wants NASCAR to keep the Clash fresh

For many Cup Series drivers, competing at the Bowman Gray Stadium was a step outside their comfort zone. The narrow, quarter-mile short track makes overtaking notoriously difficult, resulting in plenty of wrecks and tempers flaring on the track. In contrast, the racers knew what to expect at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, having raced at the temporary track for three consecutive years. The uncertainty and history of ‘The Madhouse’ only added to its appeal, with fans also eager to see Next-Gen cars compete on the Winston-Salem track. However, would the excitement remain the same if the race is held at the same venue next year?

Sharing his thoughts about it on the Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin candidly said, “I think you probably got to keep moving it. I think people tuned into Bowman Gray because it’s a track they had not seen before. I think they tuned in to LA because it’s a track they had not seen before. How are these guys going to navigate it? How are they going to adapt to it?” The veteran racer went on to say, “People tune in to see the unknown. Once they know it and see it, if you just keep feeding them more of it, eventually they’ll get tired. It’s just that’s the ebbs and flows of sports.”

The Clash has been subjected to a venue change plenty of times before. The exhibition race was first hosted by Daytona International Speedway back in 1979 before switching to the Daytona road course in 2021. Just a year later, the pre-season opener made its way to the LA Coliseum, finding a new home until 2024 before moving again to the Bowman Gray Stadium. Monotony can be a detrimental aspect in motorsports, and NASCAR has avoided that by hosting ‘The Clash’ on a new track now and then.

However, Denny Hamlin still prefers the Clash being held at Daytona International Speedway. The 44-year-old believes that the 2.5-mile oval serves as a prelude to ‘The Great American Race’, helping teams fine-tune their equipment for the crown-jewel event. He said prior to the race at ‘The Madhouse’, “I liked the Clash at Daytona, it was a good warm-up for the 500”. While NASCAR’s experiment with different venues has undoubtedly kept the pre-season race fresh, is the exhibition race losing its original purpose by transitioning into a pre-season brawl?

Hamlin eyes improvement after the Clash disappointment

Despite leading 28 laps at the Bowman Gray Stadium, Denny Hamlin was forced to settle for a third-place finish at the Cook Out Clash. The No. 11 Toyota driver had won the exhibition race four times before, but competing at ‘The Madhouse’ proved to be an entirely new challenge, one that the veteran struggled with during the later stages of the race. While the season had not yet begun, the 44-year-old, along with his new crew chief Chris Gayle, will be going back to the shop, knowing fully well that there is work to be done ahead of the Daytona 500.

Speaking after the race, Denny Hamlin said, “I did in the first half. It’s just as it goes on, it just seems like I lose a little bit of the juice that I had. Certainly, I felt like the first half I could just kind of maneuver anywhere I wanted to go. A lot of people kind of learned from that. I could see a difference in lines in the second half versus the first. Yeah, I don’t know, I just gotta get a little better and figure out just what kind [of] makes this thing go and what makes it go for the entire race, not just the beginning.”

In many ways, his race at the Bowman Gray was quite like his Cup Series campaign last year. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver won ‘the Clash’ along with 3 more races in NASCAR’s premier series in 2024, but struggled with consistency as the season went on. Similarly, Hamlin battled hard against eventual winner Chase Elliott at the quarter-mile oval, even taking the lead before the halfway break. However, his Toyota couldn’t keep up with the speed in the closing stages, eventually falling behind to finish third. Is it going to be a ‘new season – same story’ for Denny Hamlin in 2025?