Craven, Midwest Transit team ready to race again

He has taken a couple of weeks off to test.

But Newburgh’s Ricky Craven is ready to return to racing when he enters Saturday’s New Hampshire 100 Busch North series race and Sunday’s Dura Lube/Kmart 300 Winston Cup event at New Hampshire International Speedway.

After finishing 42nd in the Goody’s Headache Powder 500 on Aug. 28 at Bristol Motor Speedway (Tenn.) due to a cracked frame, Craven and his Midwest Transit Racing team decided to pass up the next two WC races and regroup while testing at Gateway International Raceway (Ill.).

“Our testing last week was very, very productive,” said Craven. “We had a great test. We left feeling really good about some of the progress we’ve made.

“We first raced together competitively in July. We’ve really accomplished a lot in a short period of time and, in an effort to perform better, we needed to come up for air,” said Craven. “We had to change some things and re-evaluate. So we tested to see if we were headed in the right direction mechanically.”

He added, “Remember who we’re racing against: the Roushes, the Hendricks, the Penskes, the Childresses and the Gibbses. We not only want to catch those teams, we want to pass them. And in order to do that we needed time testing rather than just being there (at Loudon) and scrambling to get into the race.”

Craven will drive the same Chevy Monte Carlo in which he finished 13th at the Jiffy Lube 300 on July 11 at NHIS.

He has had a lot of success at Loudon with five poles, three wins and 13 top-10 finishes in his 22 career races. In eight Busch North races, he has never finished lower than seventh.

He will drive the No. 23 Hollywood Video Chevy built by Unity’s Stan Meserve, who works for Craven’s BGN team.

He will start 36th after Busch qualifying was rained out Thursday. He earned the spot as a past series champion’s (1991) provisional.

Lake Speed recently resigned as general manager of the Midwest Transit team but Craven understood.

“He told me he wanted to drive again and he wanted to spend more time with his family. He did exactly what he set out to do with this team when he was hired several months ago: get it up and running. He’s a great guy and we benefitted from his help. I wish him the best,” said Craven, who will have input in the hiring of a new general manager.

“We’re going to be selective on who we add to the equation. The entire team really enjoys each other and there’s no substitute for that chemistry. This is the most comfortable I’ve been in two years. We’re still short on help but worse than not having a GM is having the wrong GM,” said Craven.

He said they intend to enter seven of the last eight WC races with the only exception being the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway “because we don’t have a superspeedway car.”

He said the next goal for the team will be to “step it up a notch and show what kind of progress we’ve made on the track.”

Wiscasset host for NEPSA finale

The Northeast Pro Stock Association championship will be decided at Wiscasset Raceway on Saturday when the series’ 10th and final race will be held.

Turner’s Mike Rowe, who has won three races, has a 15-point lead over defending champ Kenny Wright of Woolwich.

Bangor’s Gary Smith, who trails Rowe by 67 points, is third. Litchfield’s Gary Bellefleur and Lewiston’s Jon Lizotte round out the top five.