Rockingham Raceway Park not feeling much impact

It’s been four weeks since NASCAR announced a moratorium on most testing for 2009, but Andy Hillenburg still doesn’t know how it will impact his operations at Rockingham Raceway Park in North Carolina.

Hillenburg actually owns two tracks where teams can test because they are not on the Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Craftsman Truck nor Camping World East/West circuits. He has the 1-mile Rockingham Speedway, which was known as North Carolina Motor Speedway when the Cup series used to visit, and a half-mile mimic of Martinsville that Hillenburg just built adjacent to the big track.

NASCAR last month announced a ban that begins Jan. 1 and lasts throughout the 2009 season, prompting speculation that facilities such as Hillenburg’s might draw even more testers than it did this year.

“We’re a little bit busier, but we were fairly busy last year," Hillenburg said earlier this week. “As far as rumors that go [about] are you booked every day? The answer is no. But it‘s probably been a slight increase."

Hillenburg said he doesn’t expect to know until April if the new policy will have an impact.

“We’re getting all kinds of inquiries every week," Hillenburg said. “We have quite a few dates booked for January, but we also had a lot of dates booked for December before the announcement. … We built that new speedway well before that [new testing policy] was to go, and that was to have more races.

“We’ve got a business plan. This might help speed things along, but we’re just kind of minding our own business, doing our own deal." More at scenedaily.com