Rob Hall Pro Driver - Pole Position

A Model For Success
Rob Hall began competing in motocross at age 11, moved to Legends Cars at 15, then on to Thunder Roadsters and Pro Challenge cars a few years later. That's not a bad template, of course, for molding a stock car driver: develop a sense of balance on the motorcycle, learn car control in the Legends, get a feel for bigger vehicles in the Thunder Roadster. Then, like thousands of other racers, look for opportunities to move up.

Hall, now 21, raced short tracks in the North Carolina cities of Concord, Charlotte, Hickory, and Asheboro in recent years. With his job of setting up Legends Cars for other racers at Andrews Motorsports in Concord, racing became both hobby and livelihood.

Then, after getting to know Andy Petree, a former Cup team owner and current analyst for ESPN, Hall's aspirations for the sport took a marked turn in the right direction. Petree and Hall became acquainted when they ran against each other in a few road course races in Thunder Roadsters. They're from the same general area in the mountains of western North Carolina-Hall from Asheville and Petree from Hendersonville-and they hit it off, two fellows with motorsports and geography in common.

So Petree let Hall take his stock car to Carolina Motorsports Park, a 2.3-mile road course in Kershaw, South Carolina, for a race during the first weekend of April, and Hall made quite a showing. Starting 27th in a 30-car field, he moved into the lead within three laps and won the race, competing against road racers in 10 different classes. It was his first race in a full-bodied stock car, although he had tested one of Petree's trucks earlier at Greeneville-Pickens Speedway, an oval track in South Carolina.

Hall says he likes racing on road courses and was leading the international points for a Legends Car road racing series in 2005 when he went to a race in California, needing to beat a California racer in order to win the championship. A flat tire doomed his chances, though.

His luck looked to be no better when he showed up at Kershaw for a two-day event in early April, only to have rain wipe out his chance to practice the car on Saturday before Sunday's race. The 18-lap race was sanctioned by the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) Southeast Region. Petree's car was an older ASA car with a Busch V-6 engine. Hall says the track was still damp on Sunday morning, that he had no time at all in Petree's car, and that the tires were fresh, not having been scuffed. He calls his qualifying effort "horrible" but the tires, he says, came in soon after the start of the race, and the car came to life.

"I basically took it down there to shake it down, and it turned out better than I thought," says Hall.

He likely had more car and more engine than most of the field, but what he did required a high degree of skill, nonetheless. He had already proven himself with multiple wins on oval tracks, including a victory in a Thunder Roadster on 1.5-mile Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Hall says his immediate goal is to run an ARCA road race at Thunderbolt Raceway in New Jersey Motorsports Park on September 28.

"I am going to run some oval tracks, and I do run oval tracks," says Hall, "but I seem much more comfortable just hopping in other cars on a road course. To break into the ARCA Series, I want to try the road course for the first one."

So far, Rob Hall seems to have everything going for him in terms of moving up the motorsports ladder. He's young, he lives in the stock car Mecca of Concord, he works in motorsports, appears to have talent, and he's been able to make good contacts. Not only does he count Petree among his friends, but he's also well acquainted with Brad Daugherty, the former NBA player who, like Petree, is an ESPN commentator and part-time Thunder Roadster competitor. All three are from the same general area of North Carolina, as Daugherty hails from Black Mountain.