Newburgh native and former NASCAR star Ricky Craven has been looking to buy Speedway 95 for several years.

Sunday it became official when Craven, 59, and the third-mile asphalt track’s current owner Del Merritt announced a purchase agreement. Craven will buy the 32-acre plot of land in Hermon adjacent to Interstate 95 and take over operations on Jan. 1, 2026.

“I’m sliding all my chips into the center of the table. I’m going all in on this,” said Craven, Maine’s most famous race car driver who won twice at NASCAR’s highest level, then called the Winston Cup series.

A purchase price was not announced.

Merritt said he could have sold for twice the price to a developer “but it wouldn’t have still been a race track.”

Craven said “it’s a serious investment,” and that he thinks it will take a minimum of $5 million and five years to realize his “vision” of turning the facility into a year-round motorsports complex, “not just a third-mile raceway.”

Craven declined to say if his $5 million figure included the initial purchase price.

“The track has to be operating the overwhelming majority of every day, each year,” Craven said, adding that he intends to relocate back to Maine full-time and be a hands-on owner. Craven’s primary residence is currently in North Carolina.

“I’m absolutely certain I have 20 good years left and this is my primary objective. It will be fun as hell. Enjoyable and also backbreaking. I’ve made up my mind,” Craven said.

Craven said he’s looking to add an indoor facility to be used as an event space for weddings and banquets, with a kitchen to support both events and race-day customers, and a space to house Ricky Craven Motorsports, his muscle-car and classic car dealership currently based Landis, North Carolina, in that specializes in vintage American muscle cars and other classic automobiles.

Currently the track operates on Wednesday and Saturday nights from early May to mid-October.

“I’m absolutely certain one of the main reasons Del agreed to sell me the track as opposed to someone else is my vision and I’m going to keep it a racetrack and I’m going to improve the facility,” Craven said.

Craven got his racing start on Maine’s short tracks, earning rookie of the year honors at Unity Raceway when he was 15. He worked his way up the NASCAR ladder, winning races in each of the three national divisions, including Winston Cup wins at Martinsville (2001) and Darlington (2003), the latter by .002 of a second ahead of Kurt Busch.

His racing career ended in 2006 at the age of 40. Craven made a smooth transition to broadcasting, working for ESPN for 13 years and finishing at Fox Sports after the 2020 season.

He said Speedway 95 has long had an emotional connection for him. Some of his earliest racing memories are sitting in the stands watching both his father Alan and his mother Nancy win races at the track, which opened in 1966. Craven also won races at the track. He said the Speedway facility “has been in my DNA perhaps my entire life.”

Similarly, Merritt has spent most of his adult life working at the track. Starting as an assistant flagman in 1968, Merritt moved up to head flagman then worked in the tower before becoming a part-owner, then a half-owner with Red and Alice Baker. Merritt said after Red Baker died, he and Alice Baker were co-owners until Merritt bought out Bakers share about 15 years ago.

Merritt said he still has a five-year-old piece of paper with an offer price and Craven’s phone number stored in his wallet from an initial, fleeting negotiation. At that time, Merritt wasn’t ready to sell.

“Did I need to sell it? No. Did I want to sell it? No. Is it time to sell? Yes, I decided it was,” Merritt said.

“I think you’re going to see the place booming. I think this will probably become the primary race track in the state of Maine,” Merritt said. “Because of the things Craven’s going to do and his name. I think the two combinations together will work.”

Craven said there’s no reason to make the track bigger than a third-mile but he does want to move the main grandstand (and the pit grandstand) closer to the track and envisions widening the track to create a lower lane. Those renovations will happen in the fall of 2026, “maybe 2027,” Craven said.

“And when we move the grandstands forward, we’ll also move them up. We have plenty of seats for what we’re going to do in the next 16 months but we do not have seating capacity for where I envision this in five years,” Craven said.

Craven said the primary racing goal is to create a product that brings fans back repeatedly and encourages more drivers and teams to make Speedway 95 their first option. That’s likely harder than when both Craven and NASCAR were at their competitive peak in the early 2000s. Many short tracks across the country have closed. Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, a NASCAR sanctioned facility in Scarborough, closed in 2021.

“We have to create the team, create the series, and we need 30 cars in every division. It’s an enormous task,” Craven said.

Craven’s name recognition in his home state certainly gives Speedway 95 a boost. But it is not nearly enough to insure success, Craven said.

“I am not the savior of Speedway 95. What’s going to allow Speedway 95 motorsports complex to thrive is the product we produce,” he said. “My involvement is causing curiosity. But at the end of the day it comes down to how good the product is. Period.”