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The Rock ready to rumble again
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Location: Blogs Running Wide Open |
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| Posted by: Joe VanHoose |
5/1/2008 12:33 PM |
The most important and interesting stock car race this weekend won't be at Richmond International Raceway, where the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races Saturday night. It will be a few hundred miles south in the sand hills of North Carolina on Sunday afternoon.
After four years of relative silence, Rockingham Speedway will reopen its doors to thousands of race fans and fifty ARCA cars and drivers. Just like old times, the Carolina 500 will start at noon and have a national television audience via Speed Channel.
With the rest of the big time American racing series taking Sunday off, Rockingham, known by race fans and drivers as The Rock, will once again take center stage.
But is The Rock, which NASCAR abandoned in 2004 for a second race at Texas Motor Speedway, ready to put its best foot forward? Track owner Andy Hillenburg thinks so.
"I feel like we're well prepared for the race this weekend," Hillenburg said earlier this week. "We're looking forward to making engine noise at Rockingham again."
When Hillenburg, a former ARCA champion, race team owner and operator of a Charlotte-based driving school, bought Rockingham at auction last November, it seemed unlikely that the track could be race-ready six months later.
But here the 43-year-old track stands, ready to start writing a new chapter on Sunday.
"We're expecting a stellar field and a tremendous crowd," Hillenburg said. "I think we're going to make some history."
Rockingham faded into history in 2003 and 2004 when it could not draw 50,000 to watch NASCAR's premier division. With tracks like Texas, Charlotte and Daytona drawing crowds near 200,000 at the same time, many believed that Rockingham -- tucked away an hour from nowhere in rural North Carolina -- was a dead market.
After racing at Rockingham for 39 years, NASCAR pulled up its stakes and moved west, leaving the track behind to rot away.
Four years later, Hillenburg is singing a different tune about the communities around the speedway, and he believes that a strong walk-up crowd could fill all 32,000 seats the track has. If that's the case, Hillenburg believes more racing series will come knocking. There may even be a return of a NASCAR series down the road.
This weekend, he said, will go a long way to show The Rock's capabilities.
"We want to expand our schedule to three to five races, but a lot depends on how we do this weekend," Hillenburg said. "We've got to prove ourselves to get more dates. I think we're ready." |
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