North Wilkesboro Speedway is fully back. Will Rockingham’s track also return to NASCAR?

North Wilkesboro Speedway hosted its second NASCAR All-Star Race in as many years on Sunday evening, pushing its 27 years of abandonment further into the past and cementing its place on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule for years to come.

The Year 2 success of North Wilkesboro did something else, too.

It offered a new dose of hope to another North Carolina racetrack needing revival:

Rockingham Speedway.

Rockingham, or “The Rock” as it was known for the decades it spent as a staple on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, is in the middle of its own attempt to be revitalized after NASCAR left in the fall of 2004. The same kind of stories you used to hear about North Wilkesboro are the same ones you heard of Rockingham: Not long ago, weeds sprouted through the cracks of the Rockingham pavement. Corrugated metal made the grandstands dangerous. A venue that used to be a rite of passage in the sport had turned into an eyesore; a cultural and economic beam of Richmond County had turned into dust.

But revitalization efforts at the racetrack have made real strides in the past few years. And that, on top of an emphasis from the sport to find something new in the old, has made the owner of Rockingham Speedway hopeful.

“That seems to be proven and shown over and over again: that this is the heart of the beginning of racing,” said Dan Lovenheim, who acquired the racetrack in 2018. “It started with moonshiners trying to get away from the cops right here. And bringing it back home, in my lay man’s opinion, has shown real viability.

“NASCAR sees that too. So it does make me hopeful.”

Rockingham’s renovation and subsequent resurrection is well under way. The venue — which is not only home to the famed 1.017-mile oval (“Big Rock”) but also to a separate short-track and two infield road courses — will host its first racing event later this summer. It’ll be called the Crown 9 Series, Rockingham’s own five-part, grassroots racing series that starts in July and ends in November.

The racetrack also expects to have close to — if not all — of the weeks in 2025 booked up by the end of the year.

When will it be “NASCAR-ready,” you ask?

“Right now, as it stands, it will be NASCAR-ready by the end of the year,” Lovenheim told The Charlotte Observer. “We could’ve had it NASCAR-ready by this point if needed, but there was no need. So we focused our energy on (all parts of the venue, not just the main oval). And I want to be clear about this, and this is really important: Everybody is focused on that one thing. ‘Hey, is it going to be NASCAR ready?’ Yes, it will be. Big Rock will be NASCAR-ready by the end of 2024, meaning you’ll be able to hold your Truck race — you could hold a Cup race there if you want to.”

But, Lovenheim said, “we’re trying to bring the entire place back to life.” And that thus requires time and energy at lifting the entire venue and making it a racetrack that can and will be economically sustainable whether NASCAR comes immediately or not.

“I think 2025 is going to be a surprise to a lot of people,” Lovenheim said. “We’re resurrecting this track like a phoenix. We’re bringing it truly back to life.”

The latest on Rockingham’s renovation, construction

Revival of a facility like this one doesn’t come without substantial cost. The money has come from two different avenues.

The first is from the government. In November 2021, the North Carolina state budget earmarked about $50 million dollars to go toward renovating three speedways — Charlotte, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham — which was made available via North Carolina’s cut of a federal post-pandemic stimulus package that had passed in February 2021. Rockingham was announced to receive about $9 million of that sum.

The racetrack, per Lovenheim, received approximately $3 million of that sum initially. That money was used to repave of the venue’s main 1.017-mile oval in December 2022, a move that furnished some local media buzz and got Rockingham back on racing’s radar. The rest of the money arrived this year and has been put to rebuilding Little Rock, renovating the media center and garages and other buildings in Big Rock’s infield, and installing professional stadium lights in the infield road courses, Lovenheim said.

The rest of that money has come from Lovenheim himself. The punk-rock owner, who made a name and a fortune for bringing nightlife to Glenwood South in downtown Raleigh, estimates that he’s poured in “millions” to the revitalization effort because he believes in what The Rock can be — as a racetrack and as something more, too.

As he explained to The Observer in a profile from June 2023: “Don’t get me wrong. This is a speedway. It is called Rockingham Speedway. Its fundamental, primary use is a speedway. That being said, the way in which it had been used for many, many years was two times a year, and pretty much mothballed in between. We’re trying to have this thing be an economic generator for 52 weeks a year — for us, for the community, for everything.”

NASCAR drivers like the idea of returning to Rockingham

Drivers in the Cup garage are certainly up for the idea of Rockingham returning to NASCAR. Christopher Bell called going to a place like Rockingham — one with historical significance in North Carolina and racing that will also diversify the schedule — a “win-win.” Alex Bowman said it would be great for Rockingham to “get some attention” and that “honestly our current car would put on a really good show there.”

Bubba Wallace, who’d run grassroots race at Rockingham early in his driving career, said that he “loves” The Rock. He added that he wasn’t sure of the renovations necessary to be made before shedding a smile: “Then again, if we can go here (as in North Wilkesboro), we can go there.”

Leaders in American motorsports are certainly not turned off to the idea, either. Even if something like this requires patience.

Lovenheim said that he and NASCAR leadership are still in regular talks. Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s senior VP of racing development and strategy, told The Observer last year that Rockingham has “hit” the sanctioning body’s “radar” — but he also added that “there are a handful of things that we think about as we look at these new tracks.” Among them: market demand, fan interest, and track feasibility from a logistics and competition perspective.

Those talks are ongoing.

What else is ongoing? Work to resurrect Rockingham Speedway — a vaunted venue that not long ago was bloodied and bruised, foregone and forgotten.

“We took a track that was literally three years away from never coming back again,” Lovenheim said. “And I say that because I know where the water was going underneath the grandstands, and all of the stuff that we fixed. We were three to five years away from the decimation of the track. North Wilkesboro was probably even closer. And due to this grant money, we were able to save and resurrect it.”

He added: “We’re just trying to do our part to live up to its history and bringing it back. We’re doing what we can.”

Shane Connuck contributed to this report.