NC Gov. Roy Cooper visits North Wilkesboro to celebrate racetrack’s revitalization
It didn’t matter when Gov. Roy Cooper would visit Wilkes County — whether it was two decades ago when he was running for attorney general or just a year ago when he took laps with Richard Childress — he would always end up at the same place.
Most of the time, North Wilkesboro Speedway had grass growing in between pavement cracks. Its structures were crumbling. Its signs were rusted by time and abandonment. So were its grandstands.
“(Residents of Wilkes County) would bring you to this famous speedway, and they’d tell you Earnhardt stories,” Cooper said. “And they’d tell you about how they spent family weekends here. And they’d tell you about how they started going when they were a kid. … And they’d look at it wistfully and say, ‘We gotta do something to bring it back. We have to.’ ”
On Wednesday, Cooper saw North Wilkesboro Speedway alive again.
The governor, wearing a white racing jacket with blue and white stripes, took a short tour of the newly renovated racetrack and spoke to reporters in Victory Lane. He told the story of the racetrack’s resurrection after falling into disrepair after the NASCAR Cup Series left it in 1996, and he celebrated what its reemergence does for the state of North Carolina just days before the NASCAR All-Star Race runs there on Sunday night.
“When you think about North Carolina, you think about motorsports,” Cooper said. “And you think about the economics of it all, and clearly it puts money in the pockets of everyday North Carolinians. But it’s so much more than that. It’s a sport that’s ingrained in our state, and in our culture.”
The state played a big role in North Wilkesboro’s resurrection.
In Nov. 2021, the North Carolina state budget earmarked approximately $18 million for service to the speedway, money that was made available via North Carolina’s cut of the federal post-pandemic stimulus package passed in Feb. 2021. And then in April 2022, Speedway Motorsports announced that it would schedule “grassroots racing events” at North Wilkesboro Speedway so the company could “learn more about what needs to be done for a grand reopening in the future.”
One of those grassroots events was an emotional, magical late-August night in North Wilkesboro, where Dale Earnhardt Jr. raced in a lime green No. 3 Sun Drop late model stock car in front of a sold-out crowd. Earnhardt crossed the start-finish line third that night, but in every other way, he’d won. The Hall of Famer, overcome with emotion, said postrace that it “felt exactly like being here in 1990.”
That event delivered the racetrack momentum and attention and prompted possibility. About a week after that late model stock car race, in downtown Raleigh not far from the Governor’s Mansion, Speedway Motorsports and NASCAR announced that North Wilkesboro Speedway would host the 2023 All-Star Race.
All that happened months ago. North Wilkesboro’s return has been a reality since.
But still, on Wednesday, Cooper looked out from Victory Lane — which uniquely sits on the roof of the media center in the infield of the 0.625-mile racetrack — in wonder.
“As they began renovations, people from the community actually came out here,” he said. “They started pulling up weeds and painted and felt a part of it all. And I told Marcus (Smith, CEO of Speedway Motorsports), ‘How in the world are we going to get this renovation done before the All-Star Race?’ I said, ‘Man, supply-chain issues. I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I didn’t know that we could do it.
“But the fact that it has been done, and we are here, we are racing, and the sound of these cars, the power of it … there’s nothing like it.”
Racetrack officials have said throughout the renovation process that North Wilkesboro Speedway’s return to NASCAR isn’t a one-time deal — that they were building for the future, and building the facility back up to be able to host events beyond racing.
They repeated the same on Wednesday.
“One of the things that we wanted to do when we started with the plans for North Wilkesboro is to develop a facility that will be used year-round for lots of different events,” Smith said. “So we think there’s an opportunity for music festivals and car shows and all sorts of great events that people will want to visit North Wilkesboro Speedway again and again, and being part of it.”
Said Cooper: “It’s sort of like the U.S. Open in Pinehurst: We want to show that we can do this thing right, so that they come back with the All-Star Race here again.”
This story was originally published May 17, 2023 at 4:29 PM.
