ROCKINGHAM — Emily Gilmette knows a little bit about horsepower.
An equine veterinarian by trade, Gilmette spends some of her weekends behind the wheel of a stock car as a student of Seat Time Racing School.
The Morehead City native and New Bern resident made a few laps around Rockingham Speedway Saturday for Seat Time’s first event at the track in more than a decade.
Seat Time’s event is part of a recent revival at Rockingham Speedway, which is set to host a Solid Rock Carriers CARS Tour race in November and is home for MB Drift’s 2021 season.
The Charlotte-based racing school, founded in 1980 by late NASCAR legend and Hall of Famer Buck Baker, used to teach drivers 60 to 70 days a year at the Rock, according to instructor Walt Young.
One of the most notable drivers to come through the school is Jeff Gordon, who also ran his first Busch race at Rockingham — known then as North Carolina Motor Speedway.
“Everybody had a good time and everybody was super excited to be at Rockingham again … especially the drivers,” Young said. “It was always one of our favorite tracks.”
Gilmette started with the school last year, driving at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“The first time you do it, you just want to get out here and see if you can and then decide if you enjoy it or not, or love it or not — and I definitely loved it,” she said, adding that she just wants to learn more.
Going through Seat Time’s school isn’t her first experience with motorsports, as she drove drag cars while in college. Gilmette attended Peace College (now William Peace University) for her undergrad and earned her master’s from Auburn University.
Since being a Seat Time student, she’s also driven at Charlotte and Bristol — scraping the wall at the northeastern Tennessee half-mile track.
For her first incident in a stock car, Gilmette said she was mad at herself “for not having the proper throttle and steering control.”
Emily Gilmette, of New Bern, speaks to local media after driving a few laps around the track.
The RO asked Gilmette how Rockingham compared to the other tracks used by Seat Time: “Besides being historic — besides taking a moment on the straightaways to look up and see everything, see the historic front stretch and the back stretch — it’s an older track and a little bumpier and has a little more character to it. You can feel more as you’re driving … It’s neat.”
The summer afternoon heat also caused the track’s surface to become a little slick, according to Young.
Bumpy and slick is also how driving instructor Tom Thompson described the track.
“It’s a little bumpy, still fun and fast, a little slick, but it feels good today,” Thompson said, strapping into the No. 99 Harley Davidson Dodge truck to drive for a ride-along. “Nice cloud cover, makes things good.”
Thompson, a plumber, has been an instructor for nearly 22 years and previously ran at Rockingham.
“A good friend of mine got me into this back in ‘99 and I’ve been doing it ever since,” Thompson said, adding that he learned to instruct from the passenger seat. “It’s a fun thing to do to put a smile on somebody’s face.”
Young said one of the school’s concerns for the day was how the tires were going to hold up.
“They actually did excellent,” Young said of the Goodyear tires used on Saturday. “I brought 50 spare tires and so far we’ve used about half a dozen, so I’m real happy.”
Hoosier had to develop a new tire for the CARS Tour race following the second test in late December.
“Those guys are running 24-, 25-second laps, we’re running 30-second laps,” Young said. “It’s only five seconds, but that’s a big difference on tire wear.”
At just more than a mile long, Rockingham’s length is greater than Bristol’s 0.53-mile oval and shorter than the other two speedways’ mile-and-a-half tracks.
Gilmette said, like Bristol and other short tracks, drivers are thinking a lot while making laps around the Rock.
“On a longer track like Atlanta and Charlotte, you might be able to kind of take a breather as long as there’s not anyone pressuring you,” she said. “But here … you’re just thinking. You have a moment to look up if you need to.”
Gilmette said the racing school isn’t really a set program. Rather, aspiring drivers take courses until they’re comfortable.
“For now, I don’t want to own my own race car so it’s just out to have fun,” she said.
In the future, Gilmette said she’d like to do regional short-track racing, like the Legends, Late Model or Street Stock series.
In addition to Gilmette, Young said another driver at Rockingham who has been participating in several recent schools just landed a Craftsman truck deal.
“We’re just working to hone his skills, he’s getting ready to move up to the truck series,” Young said.
Many of the 70 participants, however, just came out for the experience of riding in a stock car — or truck — at a legendary track.
Seat Time returns to Rockingham Speedway on Oct. 31, a week prior to the CARS Tour race.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Young said.
