ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — Rockingham Speedway roared back to life this week with the sound of engines echoing through the Richmond County plains and sandhills. NASCAR’s first full-fledged test session for Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series teams turned out to be an eye-opener, with drivers discovering a fast track, talk about the resurrection of a historic venue and a community that’s happily welcoming the return.
Tuesday’s organizational test marked a prelude for both circuits’ springtime events at the 1.017-mile track, which will reopen for NASCAR business with an April 18-19 race weekend. Competition officials extended the session to a second day Wednesday, reaching that decision after a damp track and drying efforts delayed Tuesday morning’s activity.
It’s an extra day to soak in the history of a facility that’s been hosting stock-car events since the mid-1960s.
“I feel like you’d be missing out if you didn’t get that feeling,” said Daniel Hemric, who returns to the Truck Series full-time this year for McAnally Hilgemann Racing. “I mean … my grandparents, they talked about racing, and this is a place that they came and watched races at as they became fans of the sport many, many years before I was even thought of. So it’s cool to be able to come here and experience some of what they got to live through.”
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Rockingham Speedway has undergone significant upgrades after multiple developments in the track’s recent timeline. The facility was purchased by a Raleigh-based investment group in 2018, and the track received state funds intended to revitalize North Carolina’s motorsports industry in 2021. Infrastructure and safety enhancements followed, and new asphalt was placed in a 2022 repaving project.
No official test speeds were released Tuesday, but some of the early driver feedback from the resurfacing was positive. Corey Heim was among those noting the pavement’s character, plus some encouraging early signs of a widening groove in the high-banked turns.
“It’s definitely fast,” said Heim, prepping for his third full season with Tricon Garage. “I think that’s the first thing everyone realized after the track drying and we got some laps on it. Very little amount of break, and like I said, it’s quick. So I thought everyone got up to speed pretty quick. It seems like the differences between (lap) times are all pretty close within the top 20-ish, so I think everyone kind of expected it to be one groove, but it seems to be moving up a little bit in (turns) one and two already, which is promising.”
Even with the improvements, the Rockingham track still retains its old-school feel. Craftsman Truck Series teams set up camp in an open-air garage area closer to Turn 1, and Xfinity Series teams milled about the cozy garage that had hosted the Cup Series until its final race here in 2004.
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The Rockingham track would aspire to emulate the rise from the ashes that’s happened with North Wilkesboro Speedway, two and a half hours to the northeast. The Wilkes County facility had mostly sat dormant after a long run of hosting Cup Series events from 1949-1996, but the same government incentive program that provided Rockingham with aid also helped give the North Wilkesboro track a lifeline.
North Wilkesboro — reborn and modernized, but with its heritage thoughtfully left intact — will host the NASCAR All-Star Race for the third straight year in 2025. That history — both at Rockingham and Wilkesboro — hasn’t been lost on the newer generation of stars in those series.
“I think it’s a matter of going back to your roots,” said Spire Motorsports’ Rajah Caruth, a 22-year-old driver who was just shy of his second birthday when Cup last raced at ‘The Rock.’ “I think you see it with Wilkesboro and then having NASCAR’s presence in the CARS Tour and going to places like Florence and Hickory and joints like that. So I think it’s imperative, right? I think it’s twofold. It’s important, in my opinion, to be out in places like Southern California and Vegas and Phoenix out there, but you can’t forget where you’ve come from. So to be here at Rockingham, to come back to Wilkesboro, and be kind of at these homegrown places where really the sport grew its roots, I think it’s important. So it’s great to be back.”
How long NASCAR will be back will at least partly depend on the race weekend’s reception. The track has already made a strong effort toward spreading the word, with billboards and signs dotting the nearby town and surrounding countryside, declaring that”The Rock” is back.
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A respectable number of fans took advantage of the free admission to Tuesday’s test to gather and watch on a chilly but sunny day from the Turn 4 grandstands. Filling the bleachers come April would mark a significant step toward sustaining Rockingham’s rebirth.
“To be honest with you, our race fans — our diehard race fans — they crave the history and the nostalgia of our sport, right? They always have,” said defending Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier. “We hear it all the time, whether it be moving numbers around or race tracks that we go to, our car styles. Our fans really gravitate toward the history of our sport, and this is one piece of that puzzle. We have a ton of fans that have shown up today just to sit in the grandstands and watch and hang out. But that being said, when we come back here and race, we’re going to have to have that same energy and participation from our fans if they want to see this on the schedule, right?
“I would say that it doesn’t happen very often that race tracks come back onto the schedule after they’ve taken a hiatus, and we have a really, really good race track here that needs to stay on the schedule. So we need the fans to support it. I feel like the teams and the drivers have all bought in and want to be here, so I hope that we get the same support from the fans, and so far, that seems to be the case.”
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