Auto racing: Unity Raceway to open again this summer
Greg Veinote of Newburgh has agreed to hire the facility from track proprietor Ralph Nason. Veinote, fifty-three, hopes to have the facility — the start of stock vehicle racing in Maine — open through the quiet of June with an option to buy the song inside the destiny.
We started on this whole aspect final summer season,” Veinote stated. “We have been to date aside on an original purchase fee that it took a while. But I’m of the mindset that if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it with a purpose that I’m going to buy it.” Neither Veinote nor Nason might divulge financial information of the settlement, although Veinote said he has now not paid a deposit. “It’s a combination deal,” Nason stated. “I’m nevertheless the landowner, but Greg will do what he does with it.” What Veinote does with it will likely be non-traditional, at the least using Maine’s auto racing requirements. With tracks in Wiscasset, Oxford, Hermon, and Scarborough all imparting weekly auto racing packages on asphalt ovals at some point in the summertime, Veinote plans to take a broader view of the property. In addition to 4- and 6-cylinder racing divisions using the existing race music and the track’s infield, occasions will likely vary from lawnmower races and tractor pulls to different styles of motorsports amusement. The car suggests and cruise nights, as well as different own family-orientated activities, are also in play, Nason and Veinote said.
“Right now, it’s referred to as Unity Raceway. However, I need it to be called Unity Raceway and Fairgrounds,” said Veinote, who hopes to hold approximately five or six racing activities this season. “I’ve been busy getting all and sundry so as. It’s going to take a massive attempt on our component to make the entirety pop out the way I want and make humans proud to power beyond Unity Raceway once more.” Veinote and Nason have previously carried out business collectively. In 2007, Veinote offered Spud Speedway in Caribou from Nason before promoting it to Troy Haney much less than three years later. At the time, Spud Speedway was dormant for nearly seven years. Nason embraces the belief that something one of a kind is wanted on the tune, which opened for inventory car racing in 1948. Nason of Unity sold the music in 1980. “You need to have something in which humans don’t ought to spend 30 grand for a race automobile to race for 22 bucks (in handbag money),” Nason stated. “The coin is lopsided as hell. If you may carry it again to something where people can come as a family unit, have a blast, go home speaking approximately it, and didn’t spend an entire week’s paycheck to do it, they’re going to come back back.”
Nason entered into a settlement to sell Unity Raceway to Benton’s George Fernald in 2016. Fernald’s plan is to return the music to its authentic dust oval even as finishing some capital enhancements to the existing centers. When his health declined, Fernald needed to restore the track to Nason. Following the crowning glory of the 2017 season, Fernald commenced grinding up the race music’s asphalt floor to get to the authentic clay underneath it. Approximately three-quarters of the surface, as it now stands, has been torn up. Veinote doesn’t view the current circumstance of the tune as a detriment.
“A lot of human beings want to look at the mountains in front of them. However, I prefer to observe the mountains I’ve already flown over,” stated Veinote, who owns an aviation enterprise together with his father, in addition to a commercial production enterprise. “It’s a mess there proper now; it’s miles. But it’s also an open slate to do something distinctive than some other race tune inside the USA is doing.” Because the winter snow melts, Veinote will pass in the gadget to similarly grind the asphalt into a granular floor for racing on. It’s a go among asphalt and dust referred to as an aggregate. “I’m no longer certain if it’s going to paintings, but it’s got lots higher threat than (as a conventional inventory vehicle racing facility) that has a 15,000 nut simply to open the location up,” Nason stated.
