NASCAR’s Return To Rockingham Speedway Is A Hot Ticket

NASCAR is ready to roll back to The Rock.

The racing series is returning to North Carolina’s Rockingham Speedway the weekend of April 18-19 for the first time in more than a decade, with Truck Series and Xfinity Series events.

The legendary one-mile oval first opened in 1965 and hosted Cup Series races until 2004 when NASCAR left the aging facility to expand to new markets during the sports boom era.

The facility fell into disrepair and after hosting the Truck Series 2012 and 2013 and went bankrupt in 2015. It was purchased by a group of investors led by Rockingham Properties owner Dan Lovenheim with the aim of bringing it back to its former glory.

The project took a few years to get going, but an injection of $9 million in state stimulus funds in 2021 helped push it over the line. The track was repaved, the facilities updated and last August NASCAR announced it was coming back.

Racing promotor Track Enterprises, the outfit that brought NASCAR back to the Milwaukee Mile in 2023 with a Truck Series race after a 14-year hiatus, started working with the track last year to secure a spot on NASCAR’s calendar.

 “We were watching it, seeing the improvements that were made there and started the discussions that were necessary to bring NASCAR back,” Track Enterprises president Bob Sargent told American Cars And Racing.

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“We have a great relationship with NASCAR. It wasn’t a hard sell, but we had to work out if it was a good fit for the schedule and demographics.”

Even with the upgrades that had been completed, the track wasn’t entirely ready to host a big time race last year.

“We have done an enormous amount of work with the track in the last eight months,” Sargent said. “A lot of safety, concession, suites, fixing the infield care center and media center … there was a lot that still needed to be done.”

The effort looks like it’s paid off. Grandstand seats for the Xfinity Series race are already sold out and the Truck Series looks like it will have a pretty full house, although some tickets were still available when this story posted.

Kyle Larson won the last Truck Series held at the track, while Jamie McMurray won the last four races in the Xfinity Series, which was then known as the Busch Series. Mark Martin holds the all-time Xfinity Series record with 11 wins while Richard Petty won 11 Cup Series races.

NASCAR hasn’t yet confirmed if it will return again in 2026, as it usually finalizes its schedule in August, but Sargent said he’s already in discussions about it and the possibility of adding a Cup Series date in the future.

“We’re working on all of the above,” Sargent said. “We’re always looking, but there are so many pieces of the puzzle that need to come together.”