Sports Celebrity
Christian Rose
Race Car Professional
A small-town gentleman from West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, Christian Rose grew up on his family’s farm in Martinsburg, WV and maintains deep roots in the area. He has been a lifetime racing fan and began attending races at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway at 10 years old.
Throughout his youth, Rose traveled to numerous tracks to embrace all the knowledge he could about the sport he loves. After sneaking into the Daytona garage to meet his idols, Rose visioned a path that would lead him to a driver behind the wheel.
His interaction with his idols and encompassing a wealth of knowledge, Rose’s interest grew from an enthusiastic hobby into a professional career. While dreaming of turning laps at Daytona’s 2.5-mile speedway, Rose continued a successful baseball career at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore where he played at the pinnacle of Division 1, he also graduated with honors and a degree in hospitality.
Soon after college and with several college baseball accolades to his resume, Rose jumped headfirst into the world of racing. Growing up with dyslexia, he is no stranger to facing challenges and easily rose to the occasion.
While embedded into the business and driver fundamentals of his new career, Rose continues his contagious likable demeanor. His racing career took the green fl ag in August 2018 with the support of veteran NASCAR Cup Series driver and team owner B.J. McLeod and his B.J. McLeod Motorsports team. Beginning at the Super Late Model level, Rose tested at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway before making the move to Mooresville, N.C. in December to pursue his racing career.
Racing Late Models at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway in January, Rose continued to enhance his racing craft with a devoted and dedicated Late Model schedule with stops at Hickory Motor Speedway, Fairgrounds Speedway at Nashville and running weekly at New Smyrna in a team owned by former NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Mike Skinner.
Showing progress, Rose signed with Cook Racing Technologies (CRT) in 2020 where he continued to race in Late Models across the southeast. CRT is led by Bruce Cook, best known for his endeavors in helping build Kevin Harvick Inc. into a successful empire. Cook also experience working with some of the well-known and legendary teams in the sport including Robert Yates Racing and JR Motorsports.
In 2021, his relationship expanded with CRT to include the ARCA Menards Series West – the development series owned by NASCAR where he collected two top-10 finishes at the Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway Bull Ring and then followed by a career-best seventh-place finish at All-American (Calif.) Speedway in Roseville.
This season, Rose will continue an aggressive and expanded campaign in the ARCA Menards Series East and West along with its Premier division starting off with New Smyrna on Feb. 15, before tackling the “World Center of Racing” at Daytona on Feb. 19 – his debut in ARCA’s flagship series. Rose has already captured the attention of his peers and the media alike as he steered the fifth quickest time in the second day of pre-season testing in January 2022.
The speed transitioned to other tracks throughout the season that yielded top-10 finishes at Nashville (Tenn.) Fairgrounds Speedway, Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway and a career-high seventh-place finish at Kansas Speedway, respectively.
During the offseason, Rose and his announced a transition for the 2023 season to AM Racing where he will compete full-time and contest for the driver’s championship for the Statesville,
N.C.-based team aboard the No. 32 Ford Mustang. Throughout his freshman season
of ARCA Menards Series competition, Rose delivered two top-fives, including a career-best third place at Salem(Ind.) Speedway and 13 top-10 finishes en route to a third-place
finish in the ARCA championship standings.As a rookie, Rose also completed the
most laps of any driver on the circuit, 2,550 out of a possible 2,624 for a 97.2 lap completion rate.
Additionally, Rose made two NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series starts at Richmond (Va.) Raceway and Phoenix (Ariz.) Raceway respectively. Rose returned to AM Racing and
the ARCA Menards Series in 2024, where, entering the stretch drive of the season with four races remaining, Rose has mounted three top-five and nine top-10 finishes.
Outside of racing, Rose was enshrined to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Wall of Fame for his baseball achievements in May