The Cook Out Clash Preview
After several weather delays, it seems like the start of the NASCAR Cup Series season will finally start tomorrow at 6 p.m. EST. The Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium will set the stage for the season before the two America 250 Duels and then the famous Daytona 500.
Ross Chastain starts out at the pole position. The following next five drivers to start out the race are Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Noah Gragson, and Kyle Larson (the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Champion.)
Before the race has even started, Larson is the favorite to win, according to Draftkings, with Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell, Joey Logano, and William Byron following close behind. Last year, the pole winner won with Elliott, but if we were to compare, Chastain finished sixth in that race and Larson finished 17th. That’s not to say that races always play out the same, especially with the potential of crashes, but Chastain doing well last year does play into his favorability to win this year’s race. That said, Cindric also followed closely behind Chastain last year in seventh. In this year’s race, Cindric start off in the second spot.
Still, pole positions don’t usually indicate how the race plays out, for folks who are new to racing. Blaney poled at 23rd but ended up finishing second in last year’s clash. Chastain and Cindric both poled 17th and 16th respectively but finished higher. So, if we were to predict who could win The Clash, maybe we should look further down the pole positions, and maybe Elliott’s pole win and ultimate win was a fluke.
One of those lower pole positions that could win the race is Tyler Reddick, who starts the race at 27th. Another driver is Ryan Preece, who poled at 33rd. Byron and Logano are also always ones to watch in any race, but they also sit in those pole positions where they could easily finish in the top five.
Predicting a race is nearly impossible compared to other sports but if I were to predict, I would say William Byron is in a prime position to win the race. He is an excellent driver who finished fourth last year in the standings. He finished 11 races in the top five, and 16 in the top 10. My prediction is Byron to win.
Hopefully we get to have the race though, so far, it seems cursed with mother nature.
Photo Attribution: Mike Kalasnik used with the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. The photo still is the copyright of Mike Kalasnik and no changes were made to the photograph.