The first event at the new stadium was a football game in the fall of 1938 between Wake Forest College and Duke University.

In the beginning, the stadium's sole use was for collegiate football until trotter horse racing was added on the 0.250 mi (0.402 km) dirt oval.

[2] Stock car racing at Bowman Gray Stadium was started by Bill France Sr. and Alvin Hawkins, two men who were founding fathers of NASCAR.

[7] Other winners include Glen Wood, Rex White, David Pearson, Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson and Marvin Panch.

[6] Bowman Gray's nickname, the "Madhouse", is largely attributed to the racing antics that take place on the tight, quarter mile bull ring.

[8] While this is partially the reason for the nickname, it actually originated from a qualifying format the track used in the 1950s called the "mad scramble.

"[4] In 2015, Bowman Gray celebrated its 1,000th NASCAR sanctioned race [9] On November 14, 2018, it was announced that the Stadium would get a $9 million renovation.

The modifieds are the featured division at Bowman Gray, the division started in 1949 and the all-time wins list features some of the best NASCAR drivers including Lee Petty, Ralph Earnhardt, Ned Jarrett, Richie Evans, and Jerry Cook.

Piccolo later became famous as the teammate of Gale Sayers with the Chicago Bears, and the subject of the 1971 film Brian's Song.

On October 29, 2018, a new show titled "Race Night At Bowman Gray" aired on Discovery Channel.

For the 2022 racing season, along with the other previously announced renovations, new concession stands and drains in the apron of the turns were added to help remove water in the event of rain.

[13] On March 21, 2024, NASCAR announced that they had acquired the lease of the track and would begin managing racing at the facility through 2050.

Modified and Sportsman car counts were thin during the latter part of the 1950s and the track combined the two and let the V6s run with the V8s and named it the "Modified-Sportsman Division".

Leading into the 1968 season, the track dropped the Sportsman cars and title, hence officially named the featured division as the Modifieds.

It was a division that cost only $99 to run, it was so popular that the track had to cut the fields down to two races with ten cars apiece.