Rockingham celebrates NASCAR’s return with joy — and the hope it sticks around
Just outside the town-sized celebration, as groups of fans and families and forever Richmond County-ans lumbered into the heart of downtown Rockingham, Donnie Cobbler smiled.
You didn’t need to ask why he did.
You knew by looking at him.
You could tell by the hat he wore, the one with “The Rock” and “North Carolina Motor Speedway” emblazoned on it. You could tell by how he walked, with an unencumbered joy despite the cane in his right hand holding him steady, despite his back hunched over from decades and decades of work.
But if you summoned the curiosity to ask why the smile didn’t fade from the 82-year-old Ellerbe native, you’d learn that something in particular was on his mind.
“My granddaddy, he farmed for the man that built the racetrack,” Cobbler said, referencing the man credited for founding Rockingham’s racetrack, L.G. DeWitt, a peach farmer. Cobbler’s grandfather is a Mount Airy native who ventured to the North Carolina sandhills in 1929, working “til the day he died” in 1963.
Cobbler then pointed to his hat.
“The hat here, Mr. DeWitt gave it to me, back in the 80s,” he said. “And after the last race they had out here, I took it off, and had it dry cleaned, and put it in a Ziploc bag.”
That last NASCAR race — a Truck Series race — was over 11 years ago.
“I took it out yesterday.”
He might never put it away again.
He certainly didn’t Thursday.
Thursday, after all, was a celebration of the day before Rockingham Speedway officially made its return to the NASCAR schedule. The town of Rockingham hosted “Thunderfest” — a block party filled to the brim with families and balloons and music and old cars — all because NASCAR, at long last, was coming back to the famed 1.017-mile oval.
A Truck Series race will run at The Rock at 5 p.m. Friday, which will mark the first of any such NASCAR racing since 2013. An Xfinity Series race will run at 4 p.m. Saturday; that’ll mark the first Xfinity Series race since 2004, the same year the Cup Series left and never came back.
“We are back,” Cobbler said. “We are back, yeah. And I hope to stay.”
Seeing Rockingham’s return ‘makes me happy’
Cobbler wasn’t alone in his feeling of excitement. Anyone you talked to Thursday — whether they were a teenager waiting in a long line to get a signature from their favorite Xfinity Series driver, or a couple watching the hoopla from a park bench — had a story to tell.
Had a feeling to share.
“It’s great to be back at Rockingham after so long,” said Christopher Turner-Blue. The 16-year-old made the trek from Raeford, N.C., about 40 miles East of Rockingham, on Thursday. The big racing fan wore a starter jacket and a big smile. “This is the one that’s closest to us, so we knew we had to come out to this one. On top of that, it’s my birthday on Saturday, so that’s gonna be really fun.”
Another teenager, Ariana Da Silva, came from a bit further to celebrate Thursday. The Charleston native said seeing Thursday’s festival “makes me happy.”
“We get a sense of community with everybody else,” she said. “I mean, you see all these people, we all come from different backgrounds, but we all love one thing. And that brings a good sense of community.”
It also brings back memories. Monty Crump, the city manager since 1989, couldn’t hide his town pride. He wore a denim shirt with “The Rock” stitched on the front. As he arrived back into town from business in Raleigh, “I saw the mobile homes, RVs, the campgrounds filling up, and it was a blast of nostalgia to see NASCAR’s return, to see how it is embraced.”
He added: “The crowd tonight makes you realize how much you appreciate the decision for NASCAR to come back.”
NASCAR is back, and the Cup Series is on the town’s mind
The most earnest fans would clarify that this return isn’t the full return — that NASCAR Cup Series cars coming back to the once-hallowed ground would mean it was fully back.
And they’re right: The Cup Series isn’t coming to Rockingham this weekend. That milestone is still in the distance.
Ask nightclub magnate-turned-racetrack owner Dan Lovenheim, and he’ll say that this weekend’s racing is a chance for the track to audition itself for a Cup date in the near future.
Ask Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s chief venue and racing innovations officer, and he’ll say that Rockingham is “on the radar for sure” when considering a Cup race sometime between now and 2031. As he told The Observer last month: “I think it’s something you want to see how it does the first few years, and then if it’s successful, it’s something that we’ll put in our consideration set.”
Of course, ask the fans, and The Rock is ready to roll. Now. Track Enterprises — the group led by Bob Sargent tasked with promoting race events across the country, including this race weekend at Rockingham Speedway — announced on Wednesday that the Xfinity Series race is sold out.
One former Cup driver and proud fan, Kenny Wallace, spent the evening signing autographs. But he was also brought on stage for a brief Q&A, where he praised the town’s enthusiasm for bringing the racing back. He later expounded on those thoughts to The Observer.
“Me and my dear best friend in life, Kenny Schrader, when we came here, we didn’t know what to expect,” Wallace said. “It’s like, ‘Are they going to welcome NASCAR back, or are they going to be mad?’ Man, they’re happy. They are really happy. And I always say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with feeling good.’”
Wallace praised Kennedy and Sargent for getting the deal done.
When asked about the potential for Rockingham’s capability to host a Cup race, he shrugged and smiled.
“In my honest opinion, I saw enough examples today, touring the racetrack,” Wallace said. “I’ll tell you what it is, and I don’t feel bad about saying it: I saw all three automakers here (Chevy, Toyota and Ford). And I think they’re here to get data because they know Cup is going to come back here. The only thing that can stop it is something go wrong.
“But we’re sold out. There are campers out there already like it’s a Cup race. Now, next year, let’s see if it sustains that excitement. And then I predict— my prediction is that in 2027, the Cup Series will be here. They’ll continue to move dates around. They will. They’ll figure it out.”
Why Rockingham’s NASCAR return is considered special
The amount of work that has gone into reviving this track deserved such a warm welcome from the fans.
From its construction and first race in 1965 to the early 2000s, The Rock was a rite of passage in the sport of racing and a staple on the NASCAR Cup Series. Richard Petty won at Rockingham a NASCAR-most 11 times. David Pearson earned his 100th Cup victory there. Several of the all-time great drivers, from Jeff Gordon to Matt Kenseth, clinched championships there, back when it was the penultimate race on the schedule. The racetrack was also home to that February 2001 race — the first race after the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt.
In 2004, though, NASCAR left. The reasons were defensible. Rockingham had declining track attendance for years, in part a product of two colder dates: one in February, the other in late October. The small-town infrastructure was starting to buck up against NASCAR’s ascending popularity — something racing officials wanted to capitalize on by building state-of-the-art tracks out West.
Between 1997 and 2004, once-named North Carolina Motor Speedway changed ownership multiple times, and its fate worsened with every acquisition. By 2005, it had lost both of its Cup dates, and the 250-acre property sat dormant. Racetrack ownership changed a few times after that, and one ownership group even brought the Truck Series there in 2012 and 2013. But the facility wasn’t up to snuff for NASCAR to return in 2014 — a product of the facility getting worse with time — and at that point, the racing seemed forever lost.
Then, Lovenheim purchased the racetrack in Aug. 2018. He started reinvesting in it. In 2021, the federal government passed a COVID-19 stimulus package and gave a windfall of money to North Carolina, and then the state budgeted about $50 million of that to go toward renovating the state’s three speedways: Charlotte, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham. Rockingham received about $9 million of that sum — and in the end, including Lovenheim’s own money, about $15 million has been poured into the track’s renovation, Lovenheim said.
In August, NASCAR announced that Rockingham was back on the NASCAR schedule.
And on Thursday, one day away from the spectacle, all of Richmond County seemed to celebrate it.
Back before he strode into the festival, the aforementioned smiley 82-year-old Ellerbe native named Donnie Cobbler saw a stranger who looked like a friend.
“We’re back!” Cobbler said to him.
The man smiled and responded.
“You know it!”
He didn’t even have to ask.
This story was originally published April 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
