Newburgh native Ricky Craven bought Speedway 95 in Hermon because he wants to give back to the Maine motorsports community and all the people who supported him during his rise from weekly racer at Unity Raceway to two-time NASCAR Cup Series winner.
And Craven has big plans for the Hermon track including new year-round events, a restaurant, expanded seating, and the facility’s first-ever beer sales.
Craven said he is dedicating the next 10 years of his life to his new purchase, which will be called the Speedway Motorsports Complex.
“I want to give the people as much as I can,” Craven told the Bangor Daily News on Friday. “The people have celebrated my career from 1982 even to today.”
Craven bought Speedway 95 from longtime owner Del Merritt last month. He did not divulge the amount of money he spent to buy the track but noted that it was “a significant amount.”
He will be upgrading the facility in several phases.
“I am committed to spending $5 million to see this through,” Craven said, though he expects even that won’t be enough for the entire scope of the upgrades.
“I’ll need more than that to get us to the finish line,” he added.
and he plans to spend $5 million “to see this thing through” in Hermon.
“Although it won’t be enough to get us to the finish line,” he added.
He is moving his Ricky Craven Motorsports dealership from North Carolina to the Speedway 95 property. He will carry Corvettes and other muscle cars from the late 1960s and early 1970s and they will be located in a new, enclosed 10,000 square-foot building.
That has already been approved by the town of Hermon according to Craven, who added that the town of Hermon was “very welcoming.”
As for the track itself, Craven intends to move the fence on the back stretch located in front of the pit area 60 feet closer to the track. And, over time, he will put 1,000 seats on that side of the track so “people in the pits can watch their team and their driver in comfort.”
There will be a restaurant in the front side of the new building, and on the back side of it will be concessions for the pit area.
Moving the fence in 60 feet will also create more space for the pit area.
He will bring a seating area to the front stretch, too.
“They will have the same view as fans in the grandstand but they will have a comfortable place to sit and enjoy their food and drink while watching the race,” Craven said.
Craven has moved back to the area from North Carolina and said he is in the process of establishing long-term relationships and partnerships with companies that are deeply rooted in the area.
“The knowledge they have can help me so much. Some of the businesses have been around 50, 60, even 100 years,” Craven said. “These are people I want to team up with.”
He said his priorities at the track will be the fans and drivers that make everything possible.
“The people have been the purpose for me. All the people who have been with me on this ride have been a very significant part of the purpose,” said the 59-year-old Craven.
That means taking a customer-first perspective.
“Without them, there is no business. A close second are the drivers and team members,” Craven said. “I’ve been a driver my entire life. At my core, I can relate to everything they go through.”
He said he has empathy for the amount of money and hours that drivers put into the sport
“I’m going to bridge the gap,” Craven said. “I want to reward them but they also need to understand that while I invest in them, I expect them to invest in me.”
One of the veteran drivers Craven has talked with is Bangor’s Gary Smith.
“I enjoyed spending time with Gary Smith just as much as I enjoyed meeting [Major League Baseball Hall of Famer] Ted Williams,” Craven said. “He has contributed an enormous amount to the speedway over the years. And there are hundreds and hundreds lined up behind him that deserve to be acknowledged, and I’m going to acknowledge all of them over the next 10 years.”
He intends to hold events year-round at the track.
“That is critical,” said Craven, noting that the Monster Trucks weekends at Speedway 95 have been very well-attended.
“Why can’t there be 24 other events that are different but every bit as exciting, events people in this area have always had a curiosity about but have never been exposed to?” Craven said.
Craven’s No. 32 Tide car will also be on full display in the facility.
That was the car in which he won the 2003 Darlington Raceway Cup race in South Carolina by .002 seconds over Kurt Busch, the closest race in NASCAR history up until that point.
Craven pointed out that it was the last Pontiac to win a NASCAR race.
Pro Stock car racing will also return to the track. They are the most powerful cars on the circuit, a notch above the Late Models, which are currently the top division at Speedway 95.
Craven said a three-day Paul Bunyan 500 race weekend will conclude the race season in either September or October of 2026. It will be a celebration of his first season as the track owner.
The winner of the Pro Stock feature will win a “phenomenal trophy and a winners paycheck which will be the largest ever paid out by this track by a large margin,” Craven said.
He said they don’t have time to resurface the track for next season but that will happen in the near future, and there will be several other improvements he will outline in the new year.
Paving the parking lot is one of the improvements that will happen in the future.
Craven will officially take over the track on Jan. 1 and he said it is important that outgoing owner Merritt has an enjoyable finish to his career.
“We have become close friends. We talk every day. He has more equity in this property than anyone. He has sweat equity, emotional equity and the scar tissue,” Craven said. “I absolutely have to give him the runway to close things out on his own terms.”
Craven ran 278 Cup Series races and was one of the first drivers to win in the Cup series, the Xfinity series and the Craftsman Truck series.
He was chosen the Rookie of the Year in the Xfinity and NASCAR Cup series.
On Friday afternoon, he was officially inducted into the Hampden Academy Athletics Hall of Fame and he will be at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon for Sunday afternoon’s Mobil 1 301 NASCAR Cup Series playoff race.
He will attend an autograph session on Saturday and will be the honorary pace car driver for Sunday’s race, which starts at 2 p.m.