Hundreds of racing fans filed into Rockingham Speedway Saturday for its third annual open house.
The event drew visitors far and wide with some coming from as far as New Jersey to participate in Saturday’s event.
“We’re from Syracuse, New York. It took us 13 or 14 hours to get here. This is the closest I’m going to get to running a cup race. This is a full-blown cup car, and this is a NASCAR track, I definitely wanted to be a part of it,” said racecar driver William Miner, who won the second stockcar exhibition race Saturday. “It was hot, but the car handled really, really good. This thing was on rails. It would run the top and run the bottom, this thing was really pulling hard on the straightaways. It was awesome.”
Saturday’s event displayed more than $9 million in ongoing renovations to the track. As is the tradition at Rockingham Speedway, Miner was part of a brief media photo opportunity in the winner’s circle, putting his name among legendary drivers such as Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Matt Kenseth with wins while competing at Rockingham Speedway.
“This is awesome. I never thought in a million years I would be standing here after winning a race. This is unbelievable. I want to thank all of the staff at Rockingham for bringing us here and letting us run. This was a fun day – hot, fun and awesome,” Miner said.
Although winning the Red Division, what Ed Tilley described as the slower of the two exhibition races Saturday, it did not take away from his enjoyment running the nearly 60-year-old track. Tilley learned of the exhibition through Stockcar Classics, who ran many late-model racecars Saturday, including Tilley’s.
“It was awesome. This is really the first time we’ve ever done this. It was great. I still have a rookie stripe on the back of the car. Stockcar Classics is an awesome group. I’ve been at it with them for a couple of years now, it’s an amazing group,” Tilley said. “The folks here at Rockingham are also amazing. What they’re doing here, and what they allowed us to participate in is really cool. It’s a heritage track. As my partner and I talked about earlier, we’ve been coming here as race fans for years. To be able to actually go out there and do it is amazing. It’s a dream come true. It’s been a pretty good day.”
As previously reported by the Daily Journal, ppening in 1965, Rockingham Speedway was originally a flat oval track before renovations four years later gave the Speedway its iconic D shape and high banking turns. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the track hosted its final NASCAR race in 2004, but hosted races associated with the NASCAR Truck Series until 2012. Following a spate of controversial owners in the mid-2010s, the racetrack fell out of use. In 2019, Rockingham Properties, LLC purchased the racetrack promising to bring motorsport racing back to “The Rock”. In 2021, state officials announced the track would receive $9 million of a $45 million state program to renovate North Carolina’s motorsports venues. To draw national racing circuits, Rockingham Properties, LLC repaved the track, replaced the grandstands, added new stadium lighting and renovated multiple race-related facilities. Two years after the group’s declaration to bring motorsports back to Richmond County, they hosted the Myrtle Beach Drift Series, who returned Saturday for another exhibition that also taught spectators the art of road and drift racing.
“It’s pretty magical. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps. We’ve all worked very, very hard and our entire hearts have been poured into this. Just to see all of the improvements completed, and going forward into the next season or two, we’re very excited about what we’ll be able to bring to the community. We’ve been very fortunate that people reach out to us, car clubs reach out to us and want to do events. It’s been easy for us to book, because people know we’re open and want to put cars on our track,” Rockingham Speedway Administrator Kim O’Sullivan told the Daily Journal ahead of Saturday’s open house.
O’Sullivan thanked the Richmond County community for its continued support of Rockingham Speedway as track officials aim to one day bring NASCAR back to Rockingham.
“It’s surreal. We’ve received so much support. The support from the community has been overwhelming. They are the nicest people and everybody has some nostalgic story about the track. We love hearing it. It helps educate us on how much the community really is involved, how much they do care and how much they want racing to come back. That’s our goal. Bringing racing back and bringing this community back as a racing community with the speedway,” O’Sullivan said.