NASCAR Practice at Rockingham

With the NASCAR season kicking off at the Daytona 500 next weekend, we just happened to see an ad on Facebook from Rockingham (AKA: THE ROCK!) that they were hosting two days of NASCAR practices in late January! Not a race, not qualifying, and no fifty dollar tickets! It was just a couple of plain old NASCAR teams running cars and trucks around the Rockingham oval for practice and testing. Open to the public! Food trucks! FREE! I'm retired! Let's go!

THE ROCK!

STOP! Wait a minute. Some dumb winter storm rolled over most of the USA, and the Rockingham practice was moved to February 3-4. OK, no big deal, so NOW let's go!

Not a large crowd, and it was chilly, but there were cars and trucks on track!

STOP AGAIN! ANOTHER dumb storm rolled in to the Carolinas and dumped nearly a foot of snow on the track, so it was moved AGAIN and then combined into one day on Friday February 6th. This storm was so bad it ALSO forced the NASCAR kick-off in Winston-Salem to move from Sunday to Monday, and then to Wednesday of this same week.  NOW LET'S GO! 

I drove up to Rockingham and enjoyed just cruising across some non-Interstates and listening to the radio. Sure enough, they had FREE parking. They had FREE admission! And they had FREE noisy trucks and cars running laps on track! Did I mention it was all FREE? That's some pretty good entertainment for not much money right there! 

In the first hour for the cars, smoke on the track...

So the trucks would have the track for an hour, then the cars, and etc. I admit I didn't stay for all day, but I enjoyed seeing the cars on track. In the very first hour for the cars, one driver had an issue as judged by the big cloud of smoke on the front straight, and that he pulled over in turn 1. This brought out the yellow caution flags (really electric lights) and all the cars came off the track. The track crew did a great job of getting out there, taking care of the driver, and towing his car off the track. They also spread kitty litter (or whatever they use) to soak up a line of fluid from the start/finish into turn 1. Then a big sweeper truck swept that mostly up, followed by two blowers that cleaned up the track. Once the track was clear the cars got back to green light running, and they missed very little time on track. 

Putting down the absorbent material, sweeper truck ready to go, and then a blower truck to clean it all off. 

In the next hour of truck running, there was an even shorter yellow, for one truck that lightly grazed the wall coming out of turn 2 and pulled into the pit. In this case the other trucks came off the track, and one truck drove out to the wall to make sure it was ok. There must have been no damage, because the green light came back on very quickly, and the sound of trucks running at full speed soon returned. 

Track Night in America Schedule

Track Night in America 2025 at the Charlotte ROVAL. 

The fine folks at the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) have just released this year's Track Night in America (TNiA) schedule, and registration for the first round of events is also now open! NMS is planning on attending at least one event at CMP this year, and maybe at some other locations. CMP has five TNiA days this year!

The closest location to me is Charlotte Motor Speedway, and for the past two years I've done a TNiA there on the ROVAL. It's a fun track, and they're hosting multiple TNiA days, but maybe I'll go to another location this year too. 

NMS Cayman at Charlotte Motor Speedway

One great thing with the TNiA events is that they are all across the USA, so there just might be one near you. It would be great to drive down at Daytona, so that is one option too. Some of the most famous tracks in the country are hosting these events, so maybe you've heard of Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Pocono Raceway, and Sebring International Raceway. 

The other great thing is that they run these events on weekdays, at a cheaper cost than other track events on the weekends. You don't need a racecar either!

For all the up to date information, check out the SCCA TNiA page: 

TRACK NIGHT IN AMERICA

24 Hours of Daytona Report

Kyle Ray-Smith and Brian Nixon check out the cars on pit lane before the race. 

We went to the 24 Hours of Daytona Race, and here's our observations: 

    -During the first hour, the cars drove laps. 

    -For the second hour, they did the same. 

    -During hours 3-24, ditto.  

The end. 

One of the drivers of this Ford Mustang was Romain Grosjean, former Haas F1 and IndyCar driver. A few hours before the race, they put all the cars on the pit lane, and you can walk around to check them out! This was very cool, even though it was very crowded. 

Oh, here's a few more specifics! The Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona is a BIG DEAL. I mean like with BIG CROWDS, one grandstand that holds over 100,000 people, BIG CROWDS, BIG INFIELD, BIG TRACK, and pretty much everything is BIG! One thing that is NOT big enough is close and convenient parking, so for most of us that means parking at a mall across the street and hiking about a mile to get to the track. Oh well, it was a good workout. 

Our view at the start. Two Navy jets flew over at the end of the National Anthem, the 2nd time was REALLY LOW AND LOUD!

Lower left is where the cars leave the main oval and turn left to the infield. On the right is where they come out of the infield, and turn left back onto the banking. Grandstand seating is open, so you can sit anywhere you want in the 100,000+ seats!

This was my first time at this event, so I can only share a few impressions, or else I'd have about 40 normal sized blog posts to try and cover everything. We had great warm weather with no rain, although there was a LOT of fog that rolled in, probably due to the big winter storm up in the rest of the country! There was so much fog overnight during the race that they threw out the yellow caution flags for over six hours on Saturday night, which I believe is a Daytona record. If you attend the race, check the weather so that you're prepared for sun, rain, cold, heat, or all the above!

Saturday night, it's cooling off and the fog is rolling in. You can see some headlights approaching from the left, and this is also a good view of the pit entry. 

Later on Sunday morning the fog cleared enough with the sun up to go racing, and things were good after that. The race runs from 1:40PM Saturday to the same time on Sunday. 

Night time pit stop. Even with cars zipping by at the bottom of the shot, you could hear the wheel guns over there in the pit!

Photo op back behind the garages. When a car is in the pit lane for damage during the race, if it's bad they have a bit of a distance to go to roll it back to the garages. 

One highlight was sitting way high up in the grandstand above turn 1 for the opening few hours, and we got a GREAT view of the first lap incident. About three cars tried to share the same space, went off track, and several other cars went off track to avoid them. That is probably not too unusual in the first corner, but then two of those cars hit each other just trying to get back on the track. It was crazy! Oh, and that 2nd collision was when the 2nd pack of racers was heading into turn 1 for the first time, so it could have been a big one! Here's my video of the incident on YouTube: 

2026 Rolex 24 Hour Start

After watching from that spot, we walked thru the turn 1 tunnel to the infield, and man we walked another mile to do that. Big infield crowd, lots of RVs, fancy cars, campfires, vendors, manufacturers, etc. We walked by the garages, saw the spare pace cars standing by, and picked up various free t-shirts and keychains too. 

This graphic sums up the four classes of cars racing on track at the same time. The GTP is the fastest class, and they are constantly passing the slower cars. The LeMans Prototype 2 or LMP2 class is unique, because all the cars use the same engine, and basically the same body from one of four manufacturers. In other words, they don't have Porsche, Ford, Corvette, Acura, BMW, Aston Martin, and brands like the other classes. 

Brian and I needed some dinner, so we walked another mile out of the turn 4 tunnel to an Olive Garden across from the track, ate some dinner, and went back in to watch the racing under the lights. This time we sat down close to the track before the start/finish, and from that up close and personal I can verify that those cars were MOVING FAST! Amazingly enough, even with the noise of cars going by, we could still hear the wheel guns in the pit lane when some cars were changing tires. Those mechanics have some industrial strength earplugs I'm sure!

We did not ride the Ferris Wheel in the infield! Other than the huge number of people and RVs, the infield pretty much smelled like wood and charcoal fires, with lots of folks camping there all weekend too!

The bottom line is that if you like race cars, then a 24 Hour Daytona is a great experience! Oh we didn't stay at the track the whole time, so you can rest easy knowing we were back at a VRBO house sleeping during the yellow flag!  

Acura on display in the infield. All the major manufacturers had various displays, contests, giveaways, etc. 

Ford probably had the largest display, like this GT. They also had some simulators if you wanted to stand in that line in the background. 

Brian and I took a break in the Porsche Club of America tent. While I was expecting fancy champagne and caviar, we did get a free soda and a bottle of water. The race was on the big screen there too. 

Pre-race, cars and opening ceremony stage are set on the pit lane. To go out there you get to walk across the track at the start finish line (right half of photo) and baby, it is STEEP on that track!

The South Carolina "Bunch of Idiots" Lemons Racing gang, waiting for the race to start.