Qualla: Orange County Speedway

Orange County Speedway: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On August 16, 1986, a twenty-nine-year-old driver named Dale Jarrett rolled onto a 3/8-mile asphalt oval in rural Orange County, North Carolina, and won the L.D. Swain 150. It was his first victory in any of NASCAR's major series, and it happened at a track most people outside the Piedmont have never heard of. Orange County Speedway, halfway between Hillsborough and Roxboro near a crossroads called Rougemont, has spent six decades being the kind of place where careers start - or end, or restart after long pauses. Jeff Gordon took his first Busch Series pole here in 1991. Shawna Robinson made her first NASCAR start in the same race. Dale Earnhardt raced here. Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, Michael Waltrip, and Ryan Blaney all turned laps on the short oval before they were household names.

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Orange County Speedway: Dirt, Then Pavement, Then Dirt Again

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The track first opened in 1966 as a quarter-mile dirt oval named Trico Speedway. Local short-track racing in the Carolina Piedmont was, in the 1960s, a self-contained world running its own divisions and its own celebrities - the same drivers and crews showing up Saturday after Sa...

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Orange County Speedway: The Busch Series Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Between 1983 and 1994, the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series - now the Xfinity Series - held 27 races at Orange County Speedway. The track became one of the first venues in the area to host a live televised Busch race when the 1990 Roses Stores 200 went out over the air on June ...

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Orange County Speedway: Closed, Then Reopened

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the early 2000s the track was in trouble. Short-track attendance had been falling across the country as televised national series pulled fans away from the local Saturday-night culture that had built NASCAR in the first place. Orange County Speedway shut down in 2003. The gran...

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Orange County Speedway: The Names Who Pass Through

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What makes Orange County Speedway worth remembering is not any single race but the cumulative list of drivers who have turned laps here. David Pearson and Glen Wood ran on the dirt before it became asphalt. Davey Allison and Donnie Allison ran here in the 1980s. Bubba Wallace, th...

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