Brickyard 400 in Craven’s triple crown

Ricky Craven’s lesson plan at the beginning of the season as a rookie on the Winston Cup circuit was simple: grow, mature and build for the future.

While doing so, the Newburgh native also picked out three races as his most important for this year: the Daytona 500 in Florida, the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, N.C., and the Brickyard 400 that begins Saturday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“This is the third leg of my own triple crown,” said Craven in a phone interview Thursday night.

Targeting specific races has worked well for Craven. He finished 16th at Daytona and 10th at Charlotte. However, he hesitated to make any predictions on how well he will fare in today’s race.

“I’d like to have a good complete run. Beyond that, it’s too difficult to establish any type of prediction. I just want to run as hard and as smart as I can,” said Craven who will start the 42-car race in 28th place based on Thursday’s qualifying time of 169.690 mph. Friday’s time trials were cancelled because of rain.

Craven’s reluctance to predict his outcome stems mostly from the Indy track, home of the Indianapolis 500. This is only the second year NASCAR Winston Cup stock cars are racing on the historic Brickyard, which opened in 1909 as an automotive testing and competition facility when the car industry was thriving in Indiana.

The old track is all new to Craven, and he finds it difficult to compare with NASCAR’s super speedways.

“Any time I go to a new track, I try to reference it to a track I’ve been to, but this is real difficult for me because (Indy) is unlike any track I’ve been to,” he explained.

“This track has straightaway speeds of up to 190 miles per hour. It will be the only track we run with that type of straightaway speed and then have flat turns on our entrance,” Craven said.

He sees the track as an excellent challenge to his driving ability, and his ultimate goal is finishing, which could earn him a paycheck of $100,000. Each driver is guaranteed approximately $50,000 just to start the race, according to Craven.

Despite the adjustments of driving on a track designed for Indy-style cars, Craven said he cannot change his race philosophy.

“In this sport you can’t afford to be cautious. Maybe in the first testing (at Indy) we were a little apprehensive at first because it was so new and there were very few references,” Craven said. “But each lap we make I get more and more comfortable with my entrance and exit.

“It’s just a matter of time, but it’s so difficult in your rookie season to accelerate the learning curve without causing damage. Indianapolis is a fine example of that.”