Welcome to the Madhouse: The boys of Bowman Gray gear up for the debut of History Channel's look at their racing and rivalries

The stock-car racing stars of Bowman Gray Stadium, who endured video crews throughout their 2009 season, will become national television stars on Sunday night.

The 13-week series Madhouse will begin at 10 p.m. on the History channel (Time Warner Cable Channel 51).

The stars of the show are drivers Tim Brown, Chris Fleming, Junior Miller, and Burt and Jason Myers.

"I hope the ‘Hollywood' stuff won't affect us too much," said Brown, who won a record-tying eighth championship last year. "I want to be able to go to Walmart and out to eat and not have people cuss at me more than they already do because they don't like how I drive."

The one-hour episodes, produced by Triage Entertainment, follow the lives and week-to-week competition between drivers and crews competing in the featured Modified Division on Bowman Gray Stadium's quarter-mile track, which has been home to NASCAR racing since 1949.

The show includes a behind-the-scenes look at the hours the drivers and crews put in preparing for races, as well as some historical information on Bowman Gray's 61 years of racing. But the focus is on rivalries and conflicts among the drivers during the 2009 season, which ran from April through August.

A press release promoting the show touts the rivalries as "Hatfields and McCoys on asphalt." In the first episode, the focal point is a "feud" between the Myers racing family and rival Miller.

Some drivers and crew members said they are concerned that emphasis on fighting and animosity between competitors in perhaps a disproportionate amount will skew the sportsmanship element of their sport.

"What they're trying to touch on, I'm not going to say that it might not be exaggerated a little bit, but for the most part Bowman Gray is about drama," Burt Myers said. "It is entertainment."

The principal players said this week that they hadn't seen a preview of the show and don't know exactly what the finished product is like.

"I'm anxiously optimistic," Fleming said. "I let the whole world in my house all summer. I hope everything turns out real good."

Brown had similar thoughts.

"I have mixed emotions about it,'' he said. "Part of me is really excited about it, and part of me is really nervous about it for the fact we don't know how we'll be portrayed….

"If you watch the (promotional) trailer, it shows 45 seconds of fighting and a few seconds of racing. There's not 45 seconds of fighting out of every 60 seconds of stadium racing. What you don't want is people watching it just to watch the fights. You want people watching it that love racing and the sport we're dedicated to."

Miller, the all-time leader with 71 wins in Bowman Gray's featured division, had a bit of a different take. "From what I've seen (from the promotional clips), it's about the way it is over there. At least you can tell your side. Everybody might not agree with it, but you can tell what you think about it," he said.

Grant Kahler, one of the executive producers of Madhouse, said that the objective was to "stay as true to reality as possible."

"It was exactly what it is," Kahler said. "It focuses on a little history of the area, of racing, of the families, the home life and the struggles these guys go through to do what they do.

"People were worried we were out there trying to find some redneck soap opera, and that's not even a little bit what we wanted."

Gray Garrison, the promoter of Bowman Gray racing, said that there is some apprehension.

"As far as the stadium, the jury is still out," Garrison said. "In the trailers they want to show the most exciting, the most controversial things, and try to compact those things into a 60-second commercial. You look at that and you think, ‘Man, are we really that bad?'

"We understand that we have colorful fans and colorful and controversial drivers. The only thing we're hoping is they don't fabricate stuff. I think we've got enough excitement, enough controversy, enough questionable things without fabricating something. With reality TV, we don't know exactly what's manufactured and what's real and actually happening….

"Hopefully this will be good for the drivers, because that's the main reason we went into it -- hopefully they can get some sponsorship money to keep racing. And we want to keep a little bit of our dignity. We do harp on family entertainment, believe it or not. We try to be family-oriented, and we hope that some of that part does come across."

Whatever the case, Bowman Gray racing and drivers will be more well-known after Sunday. On average, the History Channel draws about 1.5 million viewers on Sunday nights.

"It should help us some," Miller said. "It's on national TV, we'll get a lot of recognition from it, and that will help our sponsors, and I think Bowman Gray will probably benefit because it might draw a few new fans in."

Burt Myers, part of a family that has won 121 Modified races at the stadium, agreed that the show "could open some doors to some sponsors."

Kahler first visited Bowman Gray Stadium when he was a student at Wake Forest University-- he graduated in 2001 with a degree in communications -- and said he did not miss a race for three years. He and his partners came up with the idea of a reality show about stock-car racing.

He said that 2,000 hours of tape were recorded of drivers and crews working.

"I know they were frustrated with us at times, I would have been, too," Kahler said. "At times we were like ants running around in those pits. But they put up with us, and were courteous to us."

Kahler said that the possibility of a second season will depend partly on ratings, and that if there is a second season, he hopes the venue will again be Bowman Gray Stadium.

"There really isn't anywhere with that kind of history to it, that really has that kind of feel to it," Kahler said.

tbowman@wsjournal.com

Journal reporter Tim Clodfelter contributed to this report.