The air smelled of burning gas and rubber. Dust covered him when cars came up the turn on the dirt track.

The speedway, which is just south of downtown along the Eno River, was part of the Grand National/NASCAR circuit, one of the eight original tracks.

"Living in a rural area where there wasn't a whole lot going on, that was a big event that happened two or four times a year," Craig said.

This weekend he is expecting as many as 70,000 people to come celebrate the 60th anniversary of the old track, which is not the same Orange Speedway in use today along the Durham County line.

Craig and his friends in the Historic Speedway Group working to restore the track have lined up about 1,000 show cars and trucks and old race cars.

Cotton Owens, Marvin Panch and "Gentleman" Ned Jarrett are among the well-known drivers who plan to be there.

"Getting to meet all the old drivers, seeing the old cars and classic cars and people seeing the restoration project ... it's going to blow my mind," said Ed Sanseverino, a group member.

"It's the only existing dirt track from NASCAR's inaugural season," he added. "A lot of people need to realize what's here, as far as history goes. This is a part of Hillsborough, a part of NASCAR."

Races continued at the speedway for about 20 years before owner Bill France grew tired of battling churchgoers who didn't like the Sunday races and the fact that many of the drivers got their start by running moonshine, Sanseverino said.

When the races stopped, pine and sycamore saplings overtook the grassy fields. Weeds nearly hid the concrete bleachers. Weather and bugs rotted the ticket office, grandstand, concessions building and outhouses.

A couple of years ago, Craig and some friends started talking about holding a car show at the old track. They formed a nonprofit and invited former race car drivers out to the track.

Their first event last September drew 40,000 people.

"That was a shocker," said Joe Crews, another group member.

"There was a lot of old race car drivers in their 90s. A lot had kept their '36 coupes, their cars," Crews said. "It was the first time anybody had asked them to take them out of their garages."

The group spent about $45,000 this year restoring the track.

They got volunteers to help pull weeds and cut down small trees. They bought 100 truckloads of dirt and lined the one-mile track with brown gravel.

They helped salvage what they could from the old ticket office.

The speedway is owned by Classical American Homes, a preservation trust.

In 2002, the speedway was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Its significance will likely protect it from a proposed bypass around Hillsborough even though it sits in one of three possible routes, said Derrick Weaver, a project development engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The Historic Speedway Group has big plans. Members would like to raise roughly $2.3 million to buy land around the track and build a racing museum big enough to hold cars.

"To preserve it would preserve a piece of history to let people know how racing began," Craig said. "The roots of where it came from, the kind of people who went there."

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