Track profile: Everything to know about Bowman Gray Stadium

Bowman Gray Stadium didn’t begin life as a race track. It actually started as a football field, a role the facility continues to fulfill to this day.

The stadium was built in 1937 as a public works project to provide jobs during the Great Depression. It is owned by the City of Winston-Salem. A portion of the money to build the stadium was donated by Nathalie Gray in memory of her husband Bowman. Mr. Gray, a philanthropist and president and chairman of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, passed away in 1935. His wife Nathalie donated $30,000 toward the stadium’s original $100,000 construction cost.

Automobile racing came to the stadium in 1947. However, the promoter left town without paying bills. NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. and Alvin Hawkins stepped in and saved the track.

The track hosted 29 NASCAR Cup Series races from 1958-71, with 1960 NASCAR Cup Series champion Rex White scoring the most wins during that time with six triumphs. That included four straight victories in 1961-62. Junior Johnson, Richard Petty and Glen Wood are tied for second with four Bowman Gray Cup Series wins each.

The ARCA Menards Series East and NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour have also raced at the track through the years, but the facility is best known for its weekly racing program.

The popular quarter-mile bullring is NASCAR’s longest running weekly racing track. Hosting racing on most Saturday evenings from late April through mid-August, the grandstands are typically packed with patrons who are there to watch the ground-pounding modifieds battle for supremacy ... and the occasional fisticuffs that result from the intense on-track action.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Tim Flock claimed the first track championship in 1949. In the years since, a number of legendary names have captured track titles at the facility, including Glen Wood, brothers Bobby and Billy Myers, Pee Wee Jones, Ralph Brinkley, Philip Smith, Junior Miller, Burt Myers and Tim Brown.