Speedway 7th North

[Curtis Cassel]

Whenwe made the bipartisan decision to invest federal relief funds from the Biden Administration to renovate speedways, we knew it would put money in the pockets of North Carolina families. The data is in and we were right that bringing NASCAR racing back to North Wilkesboro not only brings back a great sport, but tens of millions of dollars and good jobs for North Carolinians," said Governor Cooper.

In his 2021 budget proposal, Governor Cooper included funds to revitalize speedways across North Carolina. In November 2021, the Governor signed the state budget that included these funds. The budget allocated American Rescue Plan funding to speedways across the state, with North Wilkesboro Speedway receiving $18 million. The funding went toward new safety barriers, lighting, paving, fencing, roofing, internet, the public address system and HVAC and electrical equipment, as well as refurbished bathrooms and concession areas. These upgrades were critical to the decision that the 2023 NASCAR All-Star Race would be held at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

In May 2022, Governor Cooper and the North Carolina Department of Commerce announced that 15 local governments were awarded $45.8 million to help 17 motorsports venues recover from the pandemic. The money was used for public infrastructure and facility upgrades to the speedways. The grants enhanced local tourism, travel and hospitality industries that benefit from the many motorsports events held in North Carolina.

Legendary North Wilkesboro Speedway is one of the first NASCAR tracks. The final NASCAR Cup Series race at North Wilkesboro was held in 1996 and won by NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon. The track sat largely abandoned, but in recent years, the community made significant efforts to revitalize the track.

In May 2022, Governor Cooper visited the North Wilkesboro Speedway to highlight the significant investments it is receiving for repairs from the state budget. Racing officially returned to North Wilkesboro Speedway on August 31, 2022 for the Window World 125 race, where fans sold out the stadium. The 2023 NASCAR All Star Race returned to North Wilkesboro on May of 2023, in front of a packed crowd of 39,000.

By 2007, Speedway Motorsports had total control of the North Wilkesboro Speedway, but it sat dormant and fell into disrepair. Weeds sprouted, buildings fell, the pavement cracked, and rust made itself at home. Simply put: the once-iconic venue was left for dead.

And then COVID-19 happened, and with it came the American Rescue Plan Act. In 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper allocated $18 million from those funds in the state budget for Wilkes County for improvements to the speedway.

Cooper also allocated $9 million from the American Rescue Plan Act for Richmond County to repair and refurbish another now-defunct NASCAR track, Rockingham Speedway. NASCAR hasn't held a Cup Series race at "The Rock" since 2004, but Cooper is hopeful for its revival too.

"We know 'The Rock' renovation is going to be successful. And I think we're going to see a lot of great events there," Cooper said. "As to whether we get NASCAR back there or not, I don't know. But I'm all for it. And I'm willing to step up and do what we need to do. That's for sure."

Earnhardt Jr. has been retired from full-time stockcar racing for several years, but was back on the track Wednesday night, whipping his machine with a throwback Sun Drop soda logo splashed on its hood around the old track. He placed 16th, but had a blast doing it.

A moonshine cave! I was not aware that this was a type of cave. Nor was I aware that you might find one underneath the frontstretch grandstands at the North Wilkesboro Speedway. Neither were the folks at the speedway. A few weeks ago during tire testing, the operations team noticed a crack near Turn 1. When they drilled down into the concrete to see if the ground had softened beneath, they found\u2026 no ground at all. They kept drilling holes. What they discovered was a 700-square foot chasm, the size of a one-bedroom apartment, where there should have been dirt.

If you don\u2019t already know, Wilkes County has a reputation for being a place where people made a lot of moonshine. Hell, that\u2019s why the North Wilkesboro Speedway exists\u2014Moonshine runners who outran the law wanted a place where they could determine who was the best driver with the fastest car. Hence, in 1947, Enoch Staley opened a 5/8 mile dirt oval three miles east of town. The track\u2019s been there ever since. Jack Combs, who later came in as a co-owner, financed his stake with moonshine money.

Over the years, people figured that someone was probably making moonshine out there, but nobody had ever found proof. And then construction workers found a giant hole under the Turn 1 grandstands. The circumstantial evidence feels strong. Of course, there\u2019s another piece of circumstantial evidence here: North Wilkesboro Speedway is hosting the NASCAR All-Star Race next month. How convenient that this story dropped now!

Full disclosure, the folks at Speedway Motorsports did not let me climb inside the hole. But they did show me the relative dimensions of it. It stretched from Row 1 to Row 12, and was fairly wide. Operations workers pulled out about 600 metal seats, and that area\u2019s basically where the dirt had disappeared.

There were other clues. There was some sort of wall beneath the ground that ran parallel to the track. There were some columns as well. \u201CThere were things underneath there that you wouldn\u2019t normally see underneath a dirt-filled bank,\u201D said Steve Swift, Speedway Motorsports\u2019s head of operations. Notably, though, there wasn\u2019t a still or any bottles down there. There also didn\u2019t appear to be any way in or out. Sure, the press release mentions that workers found a \u201Crumored moonshine cave\u201D (marketing!), but everybody here\u2019s careful to say that there\u2019s no way to prove it. \u201CWell, there\u2019s that possibility,\u201D Swift said. \u201CWhen we saw there was a larger cave, it became really plausible that some of these stories may be true.\u201D

Some quick history here. The speedway opened in 1947, and it was fairly crude in the early years. The 5/8 mile oval was dirt, and it had an uphill and downhill stretch because Enoch Staley apparently ran out of money when he was grading it. There weren\u2019t really any stands per se. Instead, Staley pushed a bunch of dirt up near the track to create a berm for people to stand on. \u201CThere was no engineering,\u201D says Steven Wilson of Save The Speedway, a group that pushed for more than a decade to get the track reopened. \u201CThere was no inspection whatsoever when they plowed that field up. Over the years, that berm just stayed there. They eventually topped it with concrete. They put seats on half of it. They put bathrooms and concession stands and suites on top.\u201D Until the track reopened, most of the improvements at the speedway were done piecemeal.

Basically, it rained for a week before the race, and millions of earthworms crawled out of the soupy infield muck and sought refuge on the pavement. Workers shoveled up 20 gallons worth of them, and shoved thousands more down into drains. Another round of rains closer to race day sent even more worms out onto the asphalt, and the whole thing was delayed for two weeks until October 14. \u201CI\u2019ve heard of it raining frogs, but never worms until now,\u201D Richard Petty told the Charlotte Observer\u2019s legendary racing reporter Tom Higgins.

The drainage issues continued. Wilson says the track installed a drain pipe that ran underneath Turn 1 sometime in the 1980s. Its purpose: To keep the infield from flooding, which would keep future worm delays from happening. That pipe was clogged or collapsed years later, and the water would pile up and eat away at whatever was in its path. \u201CYou could scratch at the retaining wall, and the wall would just fall apart,\u201D Wilson says. Folks tried to unclog the pipe, but after the track was abandoned after 1996, it wasn\u2019t a huge priority. That changed when Speedway Motorsports announced North Wilkesboro\u2019s reopening in 2022. When renovations began, fixing drainage issues was at the top of the list.

That history is why Wilson thinks that time and hydrology are the real culprits behind the cave. \u201CThe more sober explanation could be that it\u2019s just a bunch of water that eroded this away,\u201D he says.

Swift noted that yes, water could have come in through cracks in the concrete on top of the berm. Or it could have washed things out from below. But there\u2019s something a little odd about this particular hole. When they were trying to understand how big the void was, workers filled it with water. \u201CUsually you\u2019ll see the outskirts of red clay, which is what we see in the hole, right?\u201D Swift told me. \u201CNormally, if it\u2019s an erosion problem, you\u2019ll find that trailing of red stain where [the water] left.\u201D They didn\u2019t see that. The water didn\u2019t go\u2026 anywhere. Swift says the good news was that the water test showed there wasn\u2019t a larger sinkhole underneath the cave. (For what it\u2019s worth, sinkholes aren\u2019t a naturally occurring phenomena in this area. Almost all are caused by erosion or busted drainpipes, like the one in Hickory that swallowed a Corvette.) Then, there were the buried columns and wall. Again, weird. \u201CWhere they were placed from an engineering stance, they weren\u2019t to support the grandstand,\u201D he says. \u201CIt was kind of bizarre.\u201D

There was one more clue that something was up. While renovations were going on, Paul Call got a little fidgety. Call had worked for the speedway for more than 60 years, and lived in a trailer across from the ticket office. For more than 26 years, he was the track\u2019s only employee, and served as its caretaker. He saw NASCAR return to the track just before his death last November.

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