NASCAR Preseason Clash Heading To Daytona In 2027

NASCAR will move its annual preseason race back to Daytona International Speedway after five years away from its most iconic venue. The Clash will be a Saturday night affair on Feb. 13, the night before the Super Bowl and eight days prior to the season-opening Daytona 500. It will run on the oval, with eligibility for the invitation-only event still to be determined. The race was last run on the oval in 2020 and then stayed at Daytona but was competed on the road course there in 2021. NASCAR then constructed a track inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the Clash from 2022-2024. The last two years, it was staged at the historic Bowman Gray Stadium in North Carolina. This year’s event was postponed for three days because of a heavy snowstorm in North Carolina. There shouldn’t be any worry about snow at Daytona, designed to create interest heading into the season-opening 500. It is also the first race of the 14-event FOX Sports portion of the Cup schedule, where the Cup races are aired on FOX or FS1. It will bring back an element of the old Speedweeks, where there was track activity on two weekends at Daytona. In recent years, drivers have not been on track until the Wednesday before the Daytona 500. That sounds good to Ryan Preece, who won the Clash this year at Bowman Gray and then drove to Florida to race at the New Smyrna Speedway short track in the following days. “I’m a fan of Speedweeks,” Preece told me and other reporters a couple of weeks ago at Indianapolis. “For us coming in on Wednesday and racing Sunday, being a purist and loving NASCAR — I’m happy that we … end up going early and kind of making it the whole Speedweeks vibe again. “Because that doesn’t only help Daytona, but I think it also helps the short-track side of things.” Preece’s team co-owner, Brad Keselowski, noted that he was willing to race wherever the Clash is conducted — be it Bowman Gray or Daytona. “From an RFK perspective, we’ll race wherever they put the Clash … [and] we have a lot of reason to think we’d be successful in either one of the two tracks,” Keselowski told me and other reporters at Indianapolis. NASCAR also announced Wheatley American Vodka as a new sponsor for the Clash as part of a multiyear sponsorship deal with NASCAR. The league’s decision to bring the Clash to Daytona was first reported by The Athletic. NASCAR is not expected to announce its full schedule for at least another few weeks, but tracks that have early 2027 dates are expected to announce their schedules over the next couple of weeks so they can begin ticket sales for next season.