WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Bumping, beating and banging were the headliners Saturday night, along with Chase Elliott, in the return of the NASCAR Cup Series to Bowman Gray Stadium for the first time since 1971. Elliott won the first of four heat races on the quarter-mile track and will start Sunday night’s Cook Out Clash from the pole.

Ryan Blaney was a little kid the first time he raced at Bowman Gray Stadium and remembers it being the coolest thing he’d ever done in motorsports.

If this was a one-off, and the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray kind of felt that way, everyone seems to have left feeling like it produced an additive experience. Chase Elliott won the race, so he knows he isn’t entirely an objective arbiter but this is what he felt like a NASCAR Cup Series race at the place they call ‘The Madhouse’ was supposed to look,