Rockingham Speedway, at long last, is making its triumphant return to NASCAR

NASCAR is returning to a place that means a lot to North Carolina.

Rockingham Speedway, the facility that long stood as a source of joy for the Tar Heel state and served as a rite of passage for the sport of racing, is back on the NASCAR schedule in 2025.

According to a NASCAR announcement Thursday afternoon, the south-central N.C. racetrack will host an Xfinity Series race, a Truck Series race and an ARCA race on the weekend of April 18-19. The news effectively revives a beloved racetrack that, for decades, had looked like it’d seen its final day in the sun.

“We’re ecstatic,” Dan Lovenheim, owner of the speedway since 2018, told The Charlotte Observer. “This has been the goal the entire time.”

The news is undoubtedly huge for Lovenheim, who purchased the racetrack in 2018 — back when The Rock had rotted into abandoned disrepair nearly to the point of no return. He and his team saw weeds seeping up through the pavement cracks. Buildings were crumbled. The grandstands were rendered dangerous, riddled with rust and corrugated metal, before five-plus years of renovative work and millions of dollars intervened.

The moment is also huge for NASCAR. After all, Rockingham once was a fixture on the Cup schedule. Championships were clinched there. The sport — and the country — congregated there the week after Dale Earnhardt died in the 2001 Daytona 500. It’s a furtherance of NASCAR’s initiative to find the old in the new, to push the sport forward by strumming strings of nostalgia — similar to how officials saw the resurrection of North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2022 and gave it back-to-back NASCAR All-Star Races thereafter.

And, of course, it’s important for Richmond County, the municipality that surrounds the south-central N.C. racetrack. It’s a county that lost a financial and cultural boon when the Cup Series left in 2004 and never meaningfully returned outside a Truck Series race in 2010. It’s a town that, with open arms, is welcoming the racing back.

”This is a community that has missed NASCAR being there, and they’re incredibly excited for NASCAR’s return,” Lovenheim said. “Since I bought it, a dozen to two-dozen people stop by to take a picture by those rocks out front every day. There’s such a historicity here, it can’t be understated, and the level of excitement through the community, through everyone, is extraordinarily high.”

When asked about the facility’s future of hosting a Cup race, Lovenheim was cautious but optimistic.

“While there is no guarantee in ‘26 and ‘27 for a Cup race, the situation does leave open the real possibility for a Cup race in ‘26 and ‘27,” he said. “And that’ll be NASCAR’s decision. It’s our job to make 2025 the best race it could possibly be.”

Rockingham Speedway owner Dan Lovenheim: ‘Thank you’

It’s worth reiterating that having NASCAR return to Rockingham, although important and exciting, isn’t the end-all-be-all for The Rock.

The facility — which is comprised of a short track (which Lovenheim calls “Little Rock”), two infield road courses and the famed 1.017-mile oval (“Big Rock”) — is supposed to be an economic generator not just on race weekend but for 52 weeks of the year. That has required upgrading the entire facility.

And that has cost money and time. Lovenheim, who earned his fortune by bringing nightlife to Glenwood South in downtown Raleigh, bought the racetrack in 2018 and went to work. In November 2021, the North Carolina state budget earmarked about $50 million dollars to go toward renovating three speedways — Charlotte, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham — which was made available via North Carolina’s cut of a federal post-pandemic stimulus package that had passed in February 2021. Rockingham was announced to receive about $9 million of that sum.

The racetrack, per Lovenheim, received approximately $3 million of that sum initially. That money was used to repave the venue’s main 1.017-mile oval in December 2022, a move that furnished some local media buzz and got Rockingham back on the sport of racing’s radar. The rest has been used to uplift the rest of the track. Construction is ongoing in some respects — the team is set to make a few NASCAR-mandated additions, including SAFER barriers on walls and “a number of other things” — but everything “will be race-ready before the end of the year,” Lovenheim said.

That’s not something many could’ve predicted a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. Not Gov. Roy Cooper, who mentioned The Rock’s potential return when North Wilkesboro’s resurrection was final. Not even various Cup drivers, who claim Rockingham Speedway’s short-track feel with high-speed tendencies would put on a show in the Next Gen car era.

Lovenheim had belief, though.

And that belief will lead Rockingham Speedway through April 2025 and beyond.

“We’re just very thankful and appreciative,” Lovenheim said. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean us at the track, the community, those I can speak for — we’re all very thankful for this opportunity. And we aim to shine through on this.”