Associated Press
ROCKINGHAM ó Teenager Joey Lagano won in his ARCA RE/MAX Series debut, leading 257 of 312 laps and easily holding off NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader on Sunday in the Carolina 5000, the return to racing at Rockingham Speedway.
The 17-year-old Logano, driving the No. 25 Venturini Motorsports-prepared Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet, started from the pole and beat Schrader by 4.164 seconds in the 312-mile race.
“I have to thank the Joe Gibbs crew for pitting me,” said Logano, who turns 18 on May 24 and will make his NASCAR Nationwide Series debut for the Gibbs team on May 31. “They kept me out front. We’re going to get a shot at Dover coming up, and hopefully we’ll see victory lane there too. I wasn’t running flat out the whole race. You’ve got to pace yourself. That’s a really big deal here at The Rock.”
The 1.107-mile track in the sand hills of North Carolina was a fixture on NASCAR’s top stock car circuit for many years, but closed after its final race in February 2004 when Speedway Motorsports Inc. bought the track and moved its Cup race to Texas Motor Speedway. The track has since been used only for testing, special events and filming movies and commercials.
Andy Hillenburg, a former racer and driving-school owner, bought the 250-acre site, including the track, at auction on Nov. 1, 2007, for $4.4 million. He was determined to bring racing back to the track and the 500-kilometer ARCA event was the first.