Qualla: Rockingham Speedway

Rockingham Speedway: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Samuel.krystosek, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fans called it The Rock. Drivers called it the toughest one-mile oval on the schedule — banking that swept up to 25 degrees in the final two turns, an abrasive surface that ate tires by the hundred, and grandstands close enough that you could see the faces of the people screaming. On October 31, 1965, Curtis Turner won the inaugural American 500 here, and for the next thirty-nine years Rockingham Speedway was where NASCAR opened or closed its season. Then in 2004 the schedule moved on, and The Rock went quiet. The strange part of the story is what happened next: a track that should have been bulldozed for warehouses instead waited out two decades of abandonment, lawsuits, and false starts, and got its NASCAR weekend back.

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Image: Samuel.krystosek | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rockingham Speedway: An Attorney With an Idea

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Freewheeling Daredevil from Kingston, TN, USA, CC BY 2.0. The track exists because of Elsie Webb — an attorney from Hamlet, North Carolina, who in 1964 led a group of eleven investors to put up roughly a million dollars on 175 acres of Sandhills scrub off U.S. 1. Harold Brasington, who had built Darlington a decade earlier, ran the cons...

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Image: Freewheeling Daredevil from Kingston, TN, USA | CC BY 2.0

Rockingham Speedway: Bear Grease and Beargrease

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Monday Morning Racer, CC BY 3.0. Rockingham's identity was its racing surface. The asphalt was abrasive — drivers complained it ate tires too fast — and in 1977 track officials tried sealing it for the Carolina 500. The sealant made the surface so slippery the race became, in the words of one beat reporter, a 'd...

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Image: Monday Morning Racer | CC BY 3.0

Rockingham Speedway: Penske vs. Smith

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Governor Eric Holcomb, Public domain. The 1990s set up the fight that ultimately doomed Rockingham's Cup weekend. L. G. DeWitt, the peach farmer and NASCAR team owner who took over after Webb's death, died in 1990. His daughter Carrie inherited a controlling stake. In 1995 two of the biggest names in American motorsp...

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Image: Governor Eric Holcomb | Public domain

Rockingham Speedway: Ten Years of Quiet

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Monday Morning Racer, CC BY 3.0. Andy Hillenburg, a former NASCAR driver, bought the speedway at auction in 2007 for $4.4 million. He brought ARCA racing in 2008, then a Truck Series race in 2012 that Kasey Kahne won — the first NASCAR-sanctioned event at the facility since 2004. One more Truck race ran in 2013....

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Image: Monday Morning Racer | CC BY 3.0

Rockingham Speedway: Back From the Dead

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Monday Morning Racer, CC BY 3.0. A group led by Charlotte developer Dan Lovenheim bought The Rock in August 2018 for $2.8 million. Governor Roy Cooper proposed $8 million in state aid. The Epicenter music festival drew 75,000 people in May 2019. North Carolina eventually approved $9 million in COVID-relief fundi...

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Image: Monday Morning Racer | CC BY 3.0