NASCAR CookOut Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium: How to Watch, Weekend Schedule, Race Predictions, and Best Bets (Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026)

• The madhouse is back — and yes, you can bet the NASCAR CookOut Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.
• Everything you need to know about the CookOut Clash weekend schedule, format breakdown, and how to watch
• See below for our NASCAR Clash predictions and best bets for outright winners and matchups

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The NFL has done the right thing. It has gracefully stepped aside this weekend, allowing NASCAR to take center stage. It’s Clash Weekend, baby, and we’re heading straight to the madhouse.

A quarter-mile bullring. Zero degrees of banking. Brakes screaming. Tempers flaring. NASCAR’s CookOut Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium is the perfect setting for an exhibition race that…somehow…we’re also allowed to bet on.

We are so back.

Probably.

Everything that follows this sentence should come with a very aggressive “to be determined” label.

Tight turns. Short tempers. No room for errors.

The @nascarclash is back at The Madhouse. pic.twitter.com/8mr6yAeru6

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) January 29, 2026

CookOut Clash Odds

Odds available on DraftKings Sportsbook as of Friday, January 30, 2026 at 12:12pm ET. Check out the best online sportsbook for more NASCAR Clash odds.

Ryan Blaney is the betting favorite at +550, which implies a win probability of 15.4%.

CookOut Clash Weekend Schedule and How to Watch

Before we dive into the CookOut Clash predictions, we should probably establish when to turn on the TVs, what exactly we’re watching, and how this weekend is now structured…because the original plan lasted approximately five minutes.

Weather Update

A bomb cyclone has North Carolina squarely in its sights and is set to pummel the Winston-Salem area by Saturday. Forecasts are calling for up to 11 inches of snow. While some NASCAR fans, including everyone currently huddled around the @SpeedwaySteve2 watercooler, are openly campaigning for a snow-tire race, reality suggests we could be looking at early-week racing…or voided tickets altogether.

Honestly, it would be fitting. Last season was the first in quite some time without a NASCAR weather postponement. The racing gods were going to collect eventually. They say ignorance is bliss, so that’s exactly how we’ll proceed…operating under the assumption that the show goes on as planned, the madhouse delivers, and nobody asks too many questions about tire compounds in a blizzard.

Practice and Qualifying

Thanks to the impending weather, all of Saturday’s on-track activity has been canceled, and the entire schedule has been pushed to Sunday. If you’ve already memorized the old format, please delete it from your brain…the same way I deleted the first draft of this section.

Practice and qualifying will now take place Sunday beginning at 2:00pm ET and will air on FS2. The format remains largely the same: drivers will be split into three groups, and each group will participate in three timed practice sessions. As usual, only one lap truly matters. Each driver’s fastest lap time from their final practice session will determine the starting grid for the Clash main event. The top 20 drivers will advance directly on speed, while everyone else is sent to the Last Chance Qualifier.

Last Chance Qualifier

That Last Chance Qualifier will air Sunday at 6:00pm ET on Fox. It remains a 75-lap shootout, where only green flag laps count. It includes every driver who failed to qualify earlier in the afternoon. Advancement operates exactly as originally planned: the top two finishers make the main event, and a final provisional spot is awarded to the highest finisher in the 2025 points standings who has not already qualified.

The Clash Main Event

The night concludes at 8:00pm ET with The Clash, a 200-lap main event at Bowman Gray Stadium. There will be a scheduled competition caution at Lap 100, and, because this weekend insists on consistency (hah!), only green-flag laps count.

Updated timings for Sunday’s #CookOutClash. pic.twitter.com/5j6B0tIIZU

— Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium (@nascarclash) January 30, 2026

Now that we know what we’re actually looking at, and when the sweating officially begins…

What are we betting?

CookOut Clash Predictions and Best Bets

Outright Winner

• Joey Logano (+1200 DraftKings, +1000 Caesars)
• Tyler Reddick (+2200 BetRivers/DraftKings)
• Bubba Wallace (+3300 BetRivers, +3000 DraftKings)
• Austin Cindric (+5500 DraftKings, +5000 TheScoreBet/BetRivers)

You may notice that we’ve got public enemy number one sitting atop the list. There are a few reasons we’re targeting Joey Logano this weekend, and we’ll start with the most important one: Logano and I now share the same barber. He took that expensive, beautiful, full head of hair and took it straight down to the scalp this offseason. That’s a man who shows elite taste.

More importantly, Logano loves change. This is a driver who thrives in one-off, oddball, “what are we even doing here?” events. He won the very first Bristol Dirt race. He won the All-Star Race when NASCAR first returned to North Wilkesboro. When the sport gets weird, Logano gets paid. Bowman Gray absolutely qualifies.

Lights. Camera. Action. | ‘26 #NASCAR Production Day | This means it’s almost race season 👊 pic.twitter.com/4Tr8PUif4s

— Joey Logano (@joeylogano) January 20, 2026

There’s also a new variable in play this weekend because Goodyear is rolling out a brand-new left-side tire compound designed to — checks notes — once again increase tire wear and lap-time falloff. In an environment where saving rubber might matter, we’re more than comfortable trusting a grizzled veteran like Logano to manage tires… or creatively bend the rules… for an advantage late.

From a numbers perspective, the value is hard to ignore. Logano ranks fourth in our power ranker for this race, yet his outright odds are hovering around the 10th-longest on the board. That’s a meaningful gap, and the data backs it up. Last season on short, flat tracks, Logano was quietly efficient, ranking fifth in average starting position (11.1) and second in average finish (6.9). He also turned the fourth-most fast laps (11.5) and averaged 30.4 laps led over those eight events.

Qualifying up front is going to be enormous in this abbreviated event, where passing oscillates somewhere between mind-blowingly difficult and theoretical. If Logano starts near the front, we like our chances to cash something big. If he doesn’t, we have some other outright darts to root for.

Matchups

• Ryan Blaney over Chase Elliott (-115 Caesars/BetRivers)

Let’s stay consistent with the overarching message of this article: we love Penske on the shorties. Ryan Blaney, in particular, was routinely the only driver last season who could actually execute overtakes at places like Martinsville without it turning into a physics experiment. That skill matters even more at Bowman Gray Stadium, where patience is optional and space is fictional.

One set of our rankers has Blaney finishing four positions ahead of Elliott, while our most trusted tool still shows a 1.4-position edge. Elliott won this race in dominant fashion last season, but we’re trusting Blaney’s short-track pedigree to make the difference this time around.

• Joey Logano over Chase Briscoe (-115 Caesars/BetRivers)
• Christopher Bell over William Byron (-115 Caesars/BetRivers)
• Chris Buescher over Ty Gibbs (-120 Caesars)
• Denny Hamlin over Kyle Larson (-118 BetRivers, -120 Caesars)

We’ll touch quickly on these matchups, because the numbers do most of the talking. We have Logano projected to finish 3.1 positions ahead of Briscoe, Buescher 4.4 ahead of Gibbs, and Bell 2.6 ahead of Byron. Those are substantial, actionable gaps…the kind that we’re comfortable building a card around.

The only one that gives us even a moment of pause is Hamlin versus Larson. Fading Larson in my first column of the year is probably enough for SpeedwayBrandi to at least consider filing for divorce. That said, we still have Hamlin projected 3.0 positions ahead, and numbers are numbers.

Like any good degenerate, this ticket will be locked into the account. And, like any good husband, I’ll pretend to be upset when Hamlin beats Larson on Sunday.