NASCAR president calls Rockingham turnout ‘unbelievable,’ hints at its future
According to many stakeholders, Rockingham Speedway’s return to the NASCAR schedule earlier this month was a towering success.
It seems as if NASCAR’s leadership agrees.
Steve O’Donnell, the newly promoted president of NASCAR, said Monday that the Easter weekend set of races at The Rock — which included a sold-out Xfinity Series race — saw “an unbelievable turnout” and was so successful that its potential return to the Cup Series is worth monitoring and exploring.
O’Donnell told The Observer that the sanctioning body would “love to keep it as an Xfinity Series and Truck Series staple, and maybe bring in more Cup drivers to race that weekend” in the future. He added, “You never know what the future holds beyond that.”
NASCAR leadership shared this during a meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors group at the New York Times offices on Monday. The sentiment is largely in lockstep with what the sanctioning body’s messaging has been since it announced its return to the famed 1.017-mile track at Rockingham — a racetrack that, until this year, seemed as if it’d seen its final day in the NASCAR sun.
For decades, the racetrack at Rockingham served as a rite of passage in the sport of racing. It was a fixture on NASCAR’s top circuit — the Cup Series — from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s.
The Cup Series left in 2004, however, with decision-makers in the sport opting to attempt to capitalize on NASCAR’s ascending popularity by building state-of-the-art tracks in larger markets outside of the Southeast. The Cup Series hasn’t returned since.
NASCAR returned briefly in 2012 and 2013 with a standalone Truck Series race in each year. But the facility wasn’t up to NASCAR’s standard for a return in 2014, and at that point, the racing seemed forever lost.
That is, until a perfect storm materialized years later, one that featured an owner in Dan Lovenheim purchasing the racetrack in August 2018 and then a windfall of money provided by a federal COVID-19 stimulus package. The state budgeted about $50 million of that stimulus money to go toward renovating North Carolina’s three speedways: Charlotte, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham.
The Rock 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, The Observer previously reported.
That all led to a triumphant weekend that featured a Truck Series race, an Xfinity Series race and an ARCA race.
“We did everything we needed to do,” said Bob Sargent, CEO of Track Enterprises, who spoke with The Observer after the race weekend at The Rock earlier this month. “It’s a process, but we are on the radar.”
Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s chief venue and racing innovations officer, told The Observer in March that the sanctioning body is in the process of building out the Cup schedule through 2031.
“And I think the great part about it is we have great interest for new events in new markets,” he said. “I would say now more than ever we have to be more thoughtful and strategic in any moves that we make, just because (when) we add a new event, it’s gotta come from somewhere. ...
“I would say for Rockingham in particular, like all other tracks and promoters out there, it’s on the radar for sure (for a Cup date). 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.”
Lydia Craver contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 28, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
