For six decades, Rockingham Speedway has endured two NASCAR departures, survived bankruptcy auctions and years of silence and has come roaring back each time someone was stubborn enough to believe it deserved better.
The story of The Rock is, in miniature, the story of American stock car racing itself: born from ambition in a small Southern town, lifted to glory, discarded for shinier markets, and ultimately too beloved to stay gone.
The idea that Richmond County, N.C. — population under 50,000 — could sustain a premier-level NASCAR facility was, from the start, an act of faith. Harold Brasington, the same contractor who built Darlington Raceway, partnered with landowner Bill Land in 1964 to break ground on a flat, 1-mile oval.
Financial trouble arrived almost immediately, but a coalition of community leaders steadied the project, and the track opened on Oct. 31, 1965. That Halloween debut was more significant than it appeared: with manufacturers, all car makes and all of NASCAR’s marquee names — including Richard Petty and the recently reinstated Curtis Turner — competing under the same banner for the first time that season, Rockingham’s very first race was the most complete race NASCAR had run all year.
A peach farmer served as the track’s first president. From those improbable beginnings, something lasting was built.
What followed was more than 35 years of championship-caliber racing at one of the sport’s most demanding venues.
Petty won there 11 times. Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Gordon all claimed victories at The Rock. The 1973 American 500 produced one of the sport’s most enduring images of grit, when Benny Parsons — his Chevrolet shredded in a lap 13 crash and rebuilt pit-side with sheet metal pulled from rival cars — returned to finish 28th, barely enough to clinch the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
And in October 1994, Dale Earnhardt arrived with a commanding points lead and clinched his record-tying seventh Cup title with a victory in the AC-Delco 500. For a generation of fans, that frontstretch celebration embodied everything NASCAR had ever been.
By the mid-1990s, the warning signs were hard to ignore.
Rockingham ranked among the lowest-attended stops on the schedule, its rural geography — 90 minutes from Charlotte, N.C., far from airports and corporate amenities — working against it at every turn.
In 1997, L.G. DeWitt sold to Roger Penske, who modernized what he could. It wasn’t enough. NASCAR under Brian France was pivoting toward new markets — Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway, Auto Club Speedway — and the Ferko lawsuit, filed by a track investor alleging NASCAR had stripped Rockingham of a Cup date to benefit a Texas Motor Speedway competitor, was settled in a way that sealed the facility’s fate: Speedway Motorsports Inc. acquired the track to transfer its Cup date to Texas.
The 2004 Subway 400 — won by Matt Kenseth over Kasey Kahne by just 0.010 seconds, among the closest margins in Cup history — was the final top-tier race at The Rock.
It was a fitting farewell: a track that had always demanded everything from the drivers who raced on it, going out at full throttle. SMI stripped the grandstands and auctioned them off. The property went silent
When the property went to auction in 2007, former NASCAR driver Andy Hillenburg bid $4.4 million and won. He renamed it Rockingham Speedway (it was previously referred to as North Carolina Speedway), patched the asphalt, cleaned the grandstands and staged ARCA Menards Series races to keep the place breathing.
His bet paid off in 2012 when NASCAR returned with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series — the first national race there in eight years — and Kahne, the driver who had lost that photo finish in 2004, won by more than a second.
For one afternoon, The Rock was fully alive again.
But sponsorship was thin, attendance inconsistent, and in October 2013 NASCAR announced a second departure, citing the track’s failure to meet its financial obligations. The gates closed again, and for most of the mid-2010s Rockingham existed in suspended animation — no longer credible on any national racing calendar.
In 2018, a Raleigh-based investment group led by Dan Lovenheim purchased the property with a long-term plan. Then in 2021, pandemic recovery funds changed everything: North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper directed $9 million in American Rescue Plan money toward Rockingham as part of a broader motorsports infrastructure initiative, the same lifeline that also resurrected North Wilkesboro Speedway, now a fixture going forward on the Cup schedule.
Starting in October 2022, the track underwent a complete repave, its first in decades. Grandstands, catchfences, garages and a new media center all followed. By early 2024, NASCAR EVP Ben Kennedy said that Rockingham had “certainly hit our radar” as a potential returnee to the schedule. In August, NASCAR made it official: the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and Truck Series would return over Easter weekend in 2025.
Testing sessions in January produced immediate enthusiasm. “It’s definitely fast,” Tricon Garage driver Corey Heim told NASCAR.com. “I think that’s the first thing everyone realized.”
The April 18-19 weekend erased any doubt about whether Rockingham still belonged on the national stage. The O’Reilly race — the North Carolina Education Lottery 250 — sold out in advance. Kahne returned as a special entry for Richard Childress Racing, completing a sentimental arc that stretched back 21 years. Spire Motorsports driver Rajah Caruth, 22 years old and quite young when Cup last raced at The Rock, told NASCAR.com during testing: “You can’t forget where you’ve come from. To be here at Rockingham, to come back to these homegrown places where the sport grew its roots — I think it’s important.”
The Truck Series event, the Black’s Tire 200, delivered the racing The Rock always promised. Tyler Ankrum executed a daring fuel-mileage strategy from a lap down after early damage, crossing the finish line 6.657 seconds clear to end a 130-race victory drought. The O’Reilly race produced its own drama: Jesse Love was disqualified post-race for a suspension violation, elevating Sammy Smith to the victory. The weekend drew strong national television ratings alongside its packed grandstands.
On Dec. 31, 2025 — barely eight months after the sellout Easter weekend — Rockingham changed hands again. The International Hot Rod Association, led by Ohio entrepreneur Darryl Cuttell, announced its purchase of the facility. The track had been listed for sale in May 2025, just weeks after NASCAR’s return, raising questions about whether this revival would prove as short-lived as the last. The IHRA’s arrival answered them. “This is a special place with a strong foundation,” Cuttell said in a press release. “Our goal is to be good stewards of the facility, respect its history, and work collaboratively to bring quality racing and entertainment back to The Rock.” Planned improvements include facility upgrades, expanded amenities and concerts and festival-style events alongside race weekends.
Both series are both confirmed for another Easter weekend doubleheader, running alongside the ARCA Menards Series East.
Track Enterprises President Bob Sargent, the official NASCAR event promoter at Rockingham, is in active discussions with IHRA leadership. “We knew people in Richmond County and the surrounding areas were passionate, but the enthusiasm and turnout exceeded everyone’s expectations,” Sargent said in a Track Enterprises statement following the 2025 sellout.
A Cup return remains an open question given the track’s rural geography, but it is no longer an implausible one.
Richmond County Tourism Development Authority Executive Director Meghann Lambeth said in the IHRA’s acquisition release that The Rock has been “one of our community’s most recognizable and celebrated tourism icons” for decades.
But Rockingham is more than a tourism asset. It is a physical record of what American stock car racing was before it became a product — when the sport ran at places that were hard to reach and even harder on cars, built by local ambition rather than corporate calculation. Six decades of history live in that 0.94-mile oval: Earnhardt’s seventh title, Parsons’ rebuilt Chevrolet, Kahne’s two trips to victory lane separated by 13 years, Ankrum’s fuel-mileage gamble.
Two NASCAR departures. Three separate owners in the last 18 years. A government lifeline. A sold-out Easter Sunday.
The Rock has been counted out before. It has a habit of proving people wrong.
We just have to keep those seats filled and we can keep the racing going!