He positioned the track as a testing facility, used it for some regional racing series and all the while quietly restored it to the level of safety required by today's NASCAR. His wish for a national series race has now come true. As Hillenburg entered the driver's meeting today, he got a standing ovation.
SPEED will televise the Camping World Truck Series race beginning with the pre-race show at 12:30PM. Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip will be joined by Hermie Sadler and Ray Dunlap on the race telecast.
We will have a live Twitter stream starting at 12:15PM ET. You can join use by typing the #TDP1 hashtag into the Twitter.com search box. My account is located at twitter.com/thedalyplanet if you would like to view who I follow to build your own timeline. Hope to see you there today.
I LOVE IT! Andy Hillenburg deserves praise, high praise for bringing a track that never should have been stripped of a NASCAR date, back to glory. Next stop? Cup date. Mark my words...California and Kansas should be worried.
ReplyDeleteKansas has nothing to worry about, just put up casinos there and its ISC controlled. California however may be in a bit of trouble. The crowds are smaller, the facility is looking aged and for every exciting finish there has been at that track, there have been 3 terrible stinkers.
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy with the crowd in the grandstands. Talk about a dream come true.
ReplyDeleteAs for SPEED, Danielle is doing a great job filling in for Voda. She reminds be a lot of Nicole Briscoe, very professional.
This feature on the history of the Rock is fantastic. It's a shame this type of material will not make it on the FOX Cup broadcasts.
Has Truck Buddy gone away? Or is it only for select races?
ReplyDeleteNo money for Truck Buddy today. No practice or quals coverage either.
ReplyDeleteHope next year to have everything from this track streamed online.
M Editor -
ReplyDeleteGreat to see a longtime series team - Turner Motorsports at the front, even with a Cup driver behind the wheel ...sorry Piquet Jr had a misstep ...nice to see strong support as evidenced by the fannies in the seats ...and fitting to have MRN streaming live and Eli Gold with the call for NASCAR's return to The Rock ...thanks SPEED for the good pictures (mute button in use)
Walter
I couldn't be happier for Andy. The Truck races are usually well delivered. Today's was very dis-jointed. The booth talk didn't always match the video being shown. They went to commercial, came back under caution with Mike Helton saying a few words. Took five minutes to say "debris caution". Bottom line was that Andy's efforts trumped the cliches from the booth.
ReplyDeletejust got back from the rock andy has done a great job ,now its up to the fans you got to come out and support the track if you dont nascar will take the date and go back racing on those cookie cutters
ReplyDeleteGreat job Andy! Best Nascar show of the weekend.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see Andy give the command, he & his staff have worked so hard; well done; the crowd looked good.
ReplyDeleteRecently here have been some nasty comments on various topics (ie, Racehub, NASCAR Performance) about Danielle Trotta. Honestly...race reporters are not born, they are made. You either have a person who knows racing and gets the broadcasting degree, or you have a Krista Voda who has the broadcasting experience but not the racing knowledge. You have to learn one or the other. While Danielle is not perfect, I think they've been sending her out to shops and interviews, etc. so she can get to know the people and the sport, and the insiders seem to be treating her with more respect. I think she's done pretty well. Yes, I suppose she's 'eye candy'. But as a female, I get that no one gets on TV by being unattractive, male or female. And she's still a work in progress, but I think she gets better all the time, and some of the criticism on her is really sexist in a reverse sort of way.
I doubt a date will come from CA or Kansas to go to rockingham...be real.
ReplyDeleteCA had its biggest attendance this past race thats its had since 2006(90,000)! Rockingham only has seating now for just under 35,000. The attendance for the Truck race was about 27,500.
Kansas just invested all that money in suites & the Casino. They wont be moving for the foreseable future either.
The easiest way I see The Rock getting a date would be if Dover, couldnt place the money up for one of its race weekends like it did with its NNS Race @ NASHVILLE SUPERSPEEDWAY or Gateway.
The Rock could have had a NNS date this year but they wanted to test the waters with the Truck race. I see this happening for 2013.
It was great to see NASCAR back at Rockingham. I always thought it was one of the better tracks because it's a driver's track much like Darlington. I enjoyed yesterday's racing and the broadcast.
ReplyDeleteI'll put it another way: I WANT California to lose it's date. Boring racing.... And as far as Kansas or Yawnsas, as I like to call it, it's the old adage of "You can polish a t***, it's still a t***."
ReplyDeleteGreat day at The Rock! Excellent weather for fans, with enough breeze to keep things cool. I estimate the place was about 85% full.
ReplyDeleteI don't see a Cup date any time soon, though. For one thing, there's only one covered garage. That can be remedied but that's going to take money. I figure it will three or four years before Andy can afford it, since he just dropped $1M-plus for the SAFER walls.
The bigger problem with a Cup date is that the place only seats around 31,000. Obviously more seats can be put up, but we've already been down that road; the results were disastrous.
NASCAR should return the Truck series to its early days, when it barnstormed those tracks that didn't have Cup races. It was a great way to build fans for the sport as a whole.
Personally I like Danielle - hated when she left WBTV but she left for better stuff at SPEED. Hope they use her more and more.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching the truck race at Rockingham. Very glad there was a nice crowd there. I'm completely shocked that Nascar actually went back and did something right. I think the only track (big track anyway) they ever returned to before was Watkins Glen. I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteThanks Andy for hanging in there and working hard. It seems to have paid off! Best race of the weekend!