The Camping World truck series will be coming back to “The Rock” in 2012. Rockingham North Carolina was once home to North Carolina Speedway also know as the rock but the track was taken off the Nascar schedule and the race date moved to the Texas Motor Speedway by the track owner Speedway Motorsports Inc. Rockingham sat empty and void of all sounds of horsepower for three years. Then came Andy Hillenburg, a former Nascar driver who had a little cash. Andy bought the track at auction for a little over four million dollars and opened it up to local events and annual racing extravaganza’s like the Polar Bear 150 and the American 200. The Polar Bear 150 is a November race for the Frank Kimmel Street Stock nationals. The American 200 is a UARA and USRA late model pro cup event also in November. If I remember correctly the Polar Bear 150 last year drew an eighty car count for that race including Kurt Busch from the Nascar Sprint cup ranks.
Now on April 15th 2012 the Nascar Camping World truck series will return to the rock and run the “Good Sam Roadside Assistance Carolina 200 on a Sunday when the Nationwide and Sprint cup series are running Friday and Saturday out at the Texas Motor Speedway. Track owner Andy Hillenburg said that he wanted a date where the two higher series in Nascar were running west of the Mississippi and out of the market in the south east, yet close enough that some of the cup or Nationwide drivers could come out on Sunday and run the first race back at the rock. Weather could be a factor as springtime in the Carolina’s can sometimes be a bit wet but everybody is hopeful for great weather. In order for this event to come about Hillenburg had to invest an additional million dollars in track upgrades including safer barriers, which will be installed in two separate stages. The backstretch will have safer barriers installed by the time the two late model events are ran in November and the turns will get their treatment by the end of January.
With a Nascar event coming back to Rockingham, Teams will no longer be able to test there after December 31. Nascar teams have been able to test there as the rock was not on the schedule for any Nascar sanctioned events. There is a half mile short track behind the rock affectionately named “Little Rock” and since Nascar does not run on it team will still be able to test on it. Little Rock was built to resemble Martinsville Speedway and many teams can be found testing there before the Martinsville races.
This could be a great event, I mean it will be a great event to watch on Television and in order for it to succeed for additional years the fans have to come out and support it. Rockingham was falling on hard times before SMI bought the track for around a hundred million dollars. Fans were not coming out to the races there much anymore and as sanctioning fees continued to climb out of site, (See Nationwide Claim Jumpers) there just wasn’t enough money coming in to warrant continuing racing there. SMI didn’t buy the track to revamp it and save the racing there. They bought it with the express intention of taking the race dates and moving them to other SMI tracks. They must have thought that they were going to make a killing at the other tracks because it cost them a hundred million to do just that. Hillenburg isn’t in it to get rich, he is a true fan of the sport and wants to see racing come back to the rock. Scheduling issues like over saturating the market killed the rock before and now it has a truck series date that the fans can get on board with, we shall see if they show up and support this legendary track.
I really hope that Andy Hillenburg can pull this off, but his success is going to be riding on ticket prices in an economy that is still in the tank. Nascar needs to step up and chop some of the sanctioning fees off for this event so it can get a leg up and come back to life. There will be plenty of truck parking there and I have heard Hillenburg talk about being able to park trucks there, you just need to call because he needs you to come in through a certain gate. Get out there to Rockingham this spring drivers, show your support for this track. You wont be sorry you did. If I can get a load out there for a Monday delivery I may try to go myself. Nascar fans in general need to get out there and support this track! Its time to step up people.
Stay safe
TW
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