Rick Ware Racing announced Tuesday that Bowman Gray Stadium star Tim Brown — the track’s all-time wins leader — will drive the team’s No. 15 Ford in an attempt to qualify for the inaugural Clash at the quarter-mile oval.
Brown will be making his first NASCAR Cup Series bid in the Feb. 2 exhibition (8 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
RELATED: Clash logistics taking shape | 2025 Cup Series schedule
Brown holds the track record with 12 Bowman Gray championships in the featured Modified Division, a mark he established in 2022. The 53-year-old veteran set a milestone with 100 feature victories last season, a figure that leads the all-time win list. That number now stands at 101 wins to go along with his 146 pole positions.
Brown’s only NASCAR national-series start came in 2009, also through a partnership with the Ware operation, where he works full-time as a suspension and drivetrain specialist. Brown finished 27th in a Craftsman Truck Series effort at Martinsville Speedway that year.
“I’ve worked my whole life to try to be a Cup driver,” Brown said in a news release. “I’m good with working on race cars for a living because it’s still a pretty cool gig, but I always wanted to drive for a living. For Rick Ware and everybody involved here at RWR to give me the chance to go run a Cup race is so humbling and so heartwarming. It’s really cool.”
Brown also plans to participate in the Madhouse Classic on Feb. 1 (1:45 p.m. ET), a 125-lap Saturday preliminary for the track’s Modified Division. That event will provide him with a first look at the enhancements that have been made to the historic layout, including new SAFER barriers that ring the racing surface’s outer perimeter.
“That time in the Modified will be very helpful for multiple reasons,” Brown said. “NASCAR has already done some updates to the stadium with soft walls and things like that. That’s going to change the line of the race track because you make the track smaller. So the line that we generally run, you won’t be able to run because they run right out against the wall. If the soft walls take up 2-and-a-half or 3 feet, now that’s 3 feet that you can’t let the car drift out to the wall. Just getting some track time before we climb in the Cup car, which I’ve never driven before other than on the chassis dyno, will be very helpful.”
MORE: Photos: Bowman Gray renovations in progress
Brown has long been a car builder and mechanic for NASCAR Cup Series teams, for car owners such as Cale Yarborough, Michael Waltrip, Jack Roush and Rick Ware. He’s also been a stadium mainstay since beginning his weekly racing career at Bowman Gray some 35 years ago, claiming his first track title in 1996.
Being able to participate in the NASCAR Cup Series’ return to the track for the first time since 1971 — the year he was born — already ranks as a special moment full of anticipation.
“The guys who race these Cup cars today are elite,” Brown said. “They’re the best drivers in the world, and I’m not even going to put myself in that same category. I’m just going to do the best I can. I want to climb out of that thing at the end of the Clash and see my son and our family with big smiles on their faces and knowing that we did the best we could because, I promise you, I’m going to give it 110 percent. I just want to enjoy the moment, relish it and soak it all in. I’m not going to leave there and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Cup driver now.’ I’m just going to leave there knowing this was the experience of a lifetime.”
Rick Ware Racing has not announced its full Cup Series driver lineup for the 2025 season. The organization brokered a trade with Spire Motorsports late last season, putting Corey LaJoie in its No. 51 Ford in exchange for Justin Haley for the last seven races of the year.