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Rockingham is Awesome | Coffee With Kenny · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:03
  Happy Saturday morning, everybody.
• 0:07
  It's a rainy day in Georgia. You remember that song?
• 0:12
  And it's raining all over this world.
• 0:16
  Well, the rain finally came and we are rained out tonight at
• 0:21
  Pevely, Missouri. Damn it.
• 0:24
  Oh well, my Sunoco Dirt car is sitting there on Jack stands and
• 0:27
  it is ready to go for next week. So I think I'll just have a real
• 0:31
  nice easygoing week because I don't have anything to do to the
• 0:36
  dirt car. It is ready to go.
• 0:38
  All right. I had a wonderful time going to
• 0:42
  Rockingham and I went to my mama's house and had dinner with
• 0:49
  her and spent the night with mom and we had a wonderful time.
• 0:52
  My brother Mike, my mother and myself.
• 0:55
  We went to Showmars. Showmars is a just a nice little
• 0:59
  restaurant that we enjoy and went up there and had dinner and
• 1:02
  spent the night with mom and even did a coffee with Kenny.
• 1:06
  I hope you enjoyed meeting my Mama Judy.
• 1:09
  She is a bad ass for so many reasons and I hope you all got
• 1:14
  to look inside why I am the way I am.
• 1:20
  Yeah, every once in a while when I rough you all up.
• 1:22
  That's my Mama coming out. Oh, we're nice until we're not.
• 1:28
  We don't mean to be mean though. OK, so went to Rockingham and
• 1:37
  with no exaggeration, you know what I was telling Kenny
• 1:40
  Schrader and I told, I told Lee Spencer with the media and I
• 1:45
  told Bob Pockrass. I probably told about 5 or 6
• 1:49
  people. This what what I really enjoyed
• 1:53
  about Rockingham was that you didn't have to exaggerate
• 2:00
  anything. It was real.
• 2:03
  So Rockingham was really packed. The vibe at Rockingham was
• 2:09
  really real. It was awesome.
• 2:13
  And you know, they preserve that racetrack somehow.
• 2:17
  And I got to thinking how in the hell did they preserve
• 2:20
  Rockingham this good? Well, when you look back at it,
• 2:24
  there was, there was quite a few people that was trying to save
• 2:27
  Rockingham, for example, Andy Hillenburg, he bought it.
• 2:33
  And I want to say thank you to Andy Hillenburg.
• 2:35
  He, he gave it his all, but Andy just didn't have enough money to
• 2:41
  keep it going. But you know, there's Andy, he,
• 2:45
  he fixed it up. It's true.
• 2:49
  You can see pictures of Rockingham.
• 2:51
  It was dilapidated. I mean, there was my buddy
• 2:55
  Mitchell Stapleton. You know, Mitchell does all the
• 2:58
  legendary videos of NASCAR's history past.
• 3:02
  Mitchell and his girlfriend were down there and we talked and
• 3:05
  we're, we're real good friends. Mitchell Stapleman and his
• 3:08
  girlfriend. We, we go eat together.
• 3:11
  We do a lot of things together. We just, we just hit it off.
• 3:15
  We're just unlikely friends, I guess, but we really get along
• 3:18
  well. But Mitchell said they did a
• 3:21
  video where the windows were broke out.
• 3:25
  There was birds flying through the suites.
• 3:28
  And and I said, you got to be kidding me because now, now all
• 3:31
  looks like we never left. And then there, you know, I
• 3:36
  think it's like the place had three owners, but there was a
• 3:39
  time that Rockingham was in disrepair.
• 3:44
  And it's like, you know, 11 years ago, there was all those
• 3:47
  grandstands in one turns 1 and 2.
• 3:50
  And now the grandstands are gone.
• 3:51
  Where'd they go? Well, they sold them.
• 3:56
  So I want to say this about Rockingham, Kenny Schrader.
• 4:03
  And we're going to talk about this on Herman Schrader in
• 4:05
  depth. Schrader says it best.
• 4:08
  Kenny Schrader says NASCAR never left Rockingham.
• 4:14
  I'm like, explain, please. Well, history says, and it's
• 4:19
  true. It's accurate because NASCAR,
• 4:23
  when we were talking to NASCAR at Rockingham, we talked to
• 4:26
  NASCAR at Rockingham. This story is accurate 100%.
• 4:32
  Back in the day, Bruton Smith and NASCAR, they didn't own all
• 4:36
  the tracks. Rockingham was owned by the
• 4:39
  Dewitts. Well, he died and the girls were
• 4:43
  left, and there's a little bit more to the story here.
• 4:47
  But anyway, bottom line was the DeWitt sold the racetrack and
• 4:54
  the new owners basically got rid of the racetrack.
• 4:58
  So they moved a date to another racetrack.
• 5:03
  NASCAR never moved the date. It's just that the track was
• 5:07
  done. No, you know, it's like we own
• 5:10
  it, but we're not racing here anymore.
• 5:12
  So the new owners decided not to have a NASCAR race there.
• 5:16
  Same thing with Wilkesboro. So I think the title of this
• 5:22
  will be NASCAR never left Rockingham or Wilkesboro.
• 5:27
  And people are going to click on they go, yes, they did.
• 5:30
  I'm like no, no, no, no. Listen to this.
• 5:34
  So Rockingham was sold by the Dewitts.
• 5:37
  The new owners didn't want to bring cut back there.
• 5:40
  Same thing with Wilkesboro. Wilkesboro was bought out and
• 5:43
  didn't want to bring cut back there.
• 5:48
  And one thing that's really interesting, me and Schrader
• 5:50
  talked about, NASCAR went to the Chicagoland Speedway and the
• 5:55
  Joliet Speedway. 2 ovals in, you know, Joliet and Chicagoland
• 6:04
  Speedway. You know, downtown Chicago is
• 6:08
  downtown Chicago, but you drive an hour outside of town.
• 6:13
  So Chicago land and Joliet, that's not Chicago, that's like
• 6:17
  an hour outside of the Chicago people around Chicago.
• 6:20
  They're not going to drive an hour out of town.
• 6:22
  Hell, I'm not going to drive an hour to see the Cardinals play
• 6:25
  baseball. It's like 17 minutes for me.
• 6:29
  So now I'll say the street course is going really good.
• 6:33
  The street course is going really good and it's going to
• 6:36
  stay. It's going to stay going.
• 6:37
  I'm hearing good things about that street course.
• 6:40
  OK, let me get back on track here.
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  NASCAR, if if that's what we're going to say, went to
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  Chicagoland Speedway, went to California Speedway, went to
• 6:53
  Kentucky. They all failed and they all
• 6:58
  ended up right back at Wilkesboro and right back at
• 7:02
  Rockingham. So we're watching.
• 7:09
  You ever hear that story in life come full circle?
• 7:14
  NASCAR's coming right back home, and I really believe there's
• 7:19
  room for three races a year to go right back to where we came
• 7:22
  from because the Chicago St. course race is working.
• 7:27
  The only thing I could ever see is if politics got in the way.
• 7:31
  So the Chicago St. course races there, I don't know what's going
• 7:35
  to happen. Oh, I forgot California,
• 7:39
  Kentucky, Chicago, they all failed.
• 7:42
  We went back to Bowman Gray, we went back to Wilkesboro, and we
• 7:46
  went back to Rockingham 3 for 3/3 for three.
• 7:51
  We left those 3 tracks and came back home to those 3 tracks.
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  All right, we're going to keep this one 8 minutes.
• 7:58
  But NASCAR never left those tracks.
• 8:02
  Those original owners sold them and demanded NASCAR to go to
• 8:05
  those other tracks. Had a great talk with NASCAR
• 8:09
  this week and learned a lot. But buddy, I'm going to tell you
• 8:12
  one thing. I would, I would lay in that bed
• 8:15
  at night and I would dream of Rockingham.
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  Dream, dream, dream, literally. And I, I opened up, I want to
• 8:22
  thank NASCAR and Bob Sargent and everybody.
• 8:25
  I was the first person yesterday for the truck race.
• 8:29
  I stood in front of 15,000 people and I said I'm jacked up
• 8:35
  on Mountain Dew. Whoa.
• 8:38
  Crowd went nuts. It was awesome.
• 8:40
  I love you all. And I said 24 years ago, I won
• 8:45
  my last NASCAR Xfinity race here and I've dreamed of coming back
• 8:51
  to the Rock every night ever since.
• 8:55
  And NASCAR is back in Rockingham.
• 9:02
  I had a wonderful trip to the Rock and we're going to talk
• 9:04
  about it all week long. There's a lot of different
• 9:07
  stories. All right, everybody, it's a
• 9:11
  wonderful day here, said Herman Munster.
• 9:16
  It's a bang, bang day in Saint Louis, but my race cars ready to
• 9:20
  go. So I'll be ready for next week.
• 9:22
  Let's see if we got good weather next week, but I'll be watching
• 9:27
  the well, let me see. What time is it?
• 9:29
  The the ARCA race should be soon.
• 9:34
  I think it starts at 1:00 Eastern Time.
• 9:37
  And then the Xfinity race. Oh, I don't want to say this.
• 9:41
  I like Connor Zilich. Connor came up and showed me a
• 9:44
  lot of respect. He said, Herman, I know you were
• 9:47
  good here. Tell me how you got around here.
• 9:51
  I like Connor Zilich. He's high on my radar now.
• 9:54
  All right, Orchid One Xfinity starts at 4:00 Eastern Standard
• 10:01
  Time on The CW. That's just channel 11 here.
• 10:05
  That's that's just a normal everyday channel we've had ever
• 10:09
  since I've been a kid. Channel 11 in Saint Louis, The
• 10:12
  CW. All right, everybody have a
• 10:15
  great Saturday.