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With opening day less than three weeks away, Newburgh’s Ricky Craven feels they are “ahead of schedule in terms of my 10-year vision” for the transformation of Hermon’s Speedway 95 into Speedway presented by Bar Harbor Bank and Trust.
The former two-time NASCAR Cup Series winner bought the track from longtime owner Del Merritt last fall.
“Sponsorships are going terrific. The development of the racetrack and the facility are bumping up to phase three,” Carven said.
Craven said he’s had some “really late nights and really early mornings” in preparation for the June 6 opening but that the development of the racetrack and facility is going well.
“We’ve put an enormous amount of attention into the competitors’ pit area and garage area, and we have put a considerable amount of effort into the race track,” he said. “And the folks will feel it when they walk up the midway and when they look over from the midway. They will see it is essentially a new track. They won’t recognize it.”
He said they have put some pavement down “and the structure of the track, the outer perimeter of the track, has been modernized.”
He pointed out that within 12 hours of the checkered flag being waved on the last race of the 2025 season, “we had the back stretch of the racetrack torn apart.”
“We were building our new track and haven’t lifted off the accelerator since,” he added.
He said parts of the track have been paved, “but if we paved certain sections of the track, it would be the demise of the place. The competitors would revolt. This track has a really unique characteristic. It is phenomenal right now.
“Is it perfectly smooth? Absolutely not. But neither was Pocono [Raceway in Pennsylvania] at 212 miles an hour. Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace and Jeff Gordon all tolerated it so I didn’t dare say a word about the bumps,” said Craven, who ran 278 NASCAR Cup Series races and was one of the earliest drivers to win a Cup Series, Xfinity Series and Truck Series race.
He is looking forward to opening day and the entire season.
“I will have the same anxiety about June 6 that I had in the days and weeks leading up to my first Daytona 500,” he said. “But once I got into the Daytona 500, I established a level of comfort and focus. I incorporated all of the things that made me successful. Right now, I have all of those things mixed in with some pressure and anxiety, which is critically important. In a strange sort of way, I really enjoy the pressure. Conversely, I agonize over disappointing people. I do not want to disappoint anyone. That’s what drives me.”
Craven will never be completely satisfied, saying “my entire life, I never felt like my racecar was done. You could always make the car a little better. We put some asphalt up against the fence today because it didn’t look good. Those things are happening every single day.”
He said the thing he is most proud of is the team he has assembled to work with him at the track.
“I know what it’s like to be a part of a special team. I had it with the Tide [car]. It was a special group of people, and I’m feeling it now here,” Craven said. “I have a lot of people who really care about what they’re doing. None of them are more important to me than the next one.”
