LOUDON, N.H. – Seventeen months ago, K.K. Craven watched her husband, Ricky, taken by ambulance to a local hospital after a spectacular crash at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. She was seven months pregnant with the couple’s second child at the time.

Sue Santerre once watched a car flip over and land on top of her husband Andy’s race car. He escaped serious injury.

Newburgh’s Ricky Craven and Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre are still racing regularly, Craven as a third-year regular on the NASCAR Winston Cup tour and Santerre as a fifth-year driver on the NASCAR Grand National Busch North series. Santerre will head to the Busch South tour next year.

Being the wife of a race car driver can certainly hasten the aging process as their husbands chase a trip to victory lane by driving upwards of 150-200 miles per hour against a field of drivers gunning for that same result.

It doesn’t take much for a car to careen out of control and hit a wall or another vehicle.

But K.K. Craven and Sue Santerre accept the danger of their husbands’ sport.

“It’s a hard thing to deal with, especially after having him involved in bad crashes,” said K.K. Craven. “But this is what he wants to do and he wouldn’t be happy if he wasn’t doing it.”

Even though her husband has been involved in two serious crashes in the past two years, K.K. Craven has never asked him to consider giving up the sport. She admits that the thought has crossed her mind.

“I have said to him, `Whenever you’re ready to stop, that’s fine with me,’ ” she said.

She said there is no way to prepare for the shock of seeing your spouse involved in a major accident.

“People say, `You must be prepared for that,’ but you never really are. You know it can happen and you deal with it when it does,” said K.K.

The Talladega crash left its impact on her.

“I didn’t see it happen. I was in the pits. But I didn’t watch it for three months after it happened,” she said.

Sue Santerre said she doesn’t worry about her husband during the Busch races.

“I worry about him more in a Saturday night car than I do in the Busch car,” she said. “I guess my reasoning is the Busch cars are built to go 200 miles an hour and with the helmet, the harnesses, the safety suit, the fire suit and the gloves, he’s safer in that car going 150 than he is in his pickup truck going 75 down the interstate.”

She said the Saturday night races at local tracks worry her “because everybody guns for him. Sometimes he winds up getting spun out. I don’t mean that as a bad thing about the other drivers. It’s just that they want to beat Andy Santerre so sometimes they do whatever they need to in order to win.”

Both women met their husbands through racing.

Sue Santerre used to hate racing until her father took her to a race. She has been hooked on it ever since.

“I did an internship at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) and that’s how I met Andy. I wanted to get involved in racing. A lot of people think I like racing because of Andy but I actually wanted to do public relations for a race team or for a marketing company before I ever met Andy,” said Sue.

K.K. met Ricky when “he started racing for my uncle, Peter Prescott, in 1987. We started dating in 1988.”

Both women have been or still are involved in their husbands’ race teams.

“I always scored for him until two years ago, when the baby [Richard] was born. But I’m sure once the kids get older, I’ll have the opportunity to start scoring for him again. I’ll be more involved,” said K.K.

The Cravens have a 5-year-old daughter, Riley, along with Richard, 1.

Sue Santerre is very involved with her husband’s team. The Santerres have been married less than a year and don’t have any children.

“I do the scoring, I do all of his timing, I make the hotel reservations, I do all of his PR: the media kits, the press releases, the program stories,” said Sue Santerre. “I pretty much do anything that doesn’t have to do with the car. I clean the hauler every week, I get the guys’ uniforms ready, I get Andy’s uniform ready, I pack for Andy, I cook the guys’ food, I make sure the cooler is stocked.”

K.K. Craven and Sue Santerre also provide the emotional support their husbands need when things aren’t going well.

“If I find Andy getting down, I have to lift him up. Sometimes I get down and he lifts me up,” said Sue Santerre. “It works both ways.”

K.K. Craven said the emotional ups and downs of racing are similar to those that are associated with any other job.

“If he’s having a tough year like this one, I give him a little more support,” said K.K. Craven. “It’s a little harder than when he’s winning or running really well. But he’s never one to really get down in the dumps anyway. He always stays upbeat.”

K.K. Craven said she gets nervous before races at specific tracks and doesn’t watch the races that often.

These days, she’s busy chasing their children and that helps her deal with the dangers of her husband’s profession.

Sue Santerre said she is as gung-ho about racing as her husband.

“Andy loves it but sometimes, I think I love it more than him. It’s a good pairing between us. Racing is so much a part of our life. I don’t know if there is a life after racing. I think racing will always be a major part of our life,” said Sue Santerre.