Greg Veinote of Newburgh has agreed to lease the ability from music proprietor Ralph Nason. Veinote, 53, hopes to have the facility — the delivery of stock car racing in Maine — open by the cease of June with an option to shop for the track in the future.
“We started on this whole issue final summer,” Veinote stated. “We were to this point aside on a real purchase fee that it took a while. But I’m of the attitude that if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it with the intent that I’m going to buy it.” Neither Veinote nor Nason could disclose financial details of the settlement, even though Veinote stated he has now not paid a deposit. “It’s an aggregate deal,” Nason said. “I’m nonetheless the landowner. However, Greg will do what he does with it.”
What Veinote does with it will be non-conventional, as a minimum, by way of Maine’s auto racing requirements. With tracks in Wiscasset, Oxford, Hermon, and Scarborough all presenting weekly vehicle racing applications on asphalt ovals all through the summertime, Veinote plans to take a much wider view of the assets. In addition to 4- and 6-cylinder racing divisions using the prevailing race music and the tune’s infield, occasions will, in all likelihood, variety from lawnmower races and tractor pulls to other types of motorsports leisure.
The car suggests and cruise nights, in addition to different own family-orientated events, are also in play, Nason and Veinote said. “Right now, it’s referred to as Unity Raceway, but I want it to be known as Unity Raceway and Fairgrounds,” stated Veinote, who hopes to keep about five or six racing occasions this season. “I’ve been busy getting everybody so as. It’s going to take a big effort on our element to make the whole lot pop out the way I want and make humans proud to drive past Unity Raceway once more.”
Veinote and Nason have formerly executed commercial enterprises together. In 2007, Veinote offered Spud Speedway in Caribou from Nason before selling it to Troy Haney less than three years later. At the time, Spud Speedway had been dormant for nearly seven years. Nason embraces the perception that something special is needed on the song, which opened for stock automobile racing in 1948. Nason of Unity bought the music in 1980. “You want to have something in which humans don’t ought to spend 30 grand for a race automobile to race for 22 dollars (in handbag money),” Nason stated.
“The coin is lopsided as hell. If you could convey it back to something wherein humans can come as a circle of relatives unit, have a blast, go domestic speaking approximately it, and didn’t spend an entire week’s paycheck to do it, they’re going to come back back.” Nason agreed to promote Unity Raceway to Benton’s George Fernald in 2016. Fernald’s plan became to return the tune to its authentic dirt oval while completing some of the capital upgrades to the prevailing facilities. When his health declined, Fernald needed to go back the track to Nason.
Following the finishing touch of the 2017 season, Fernald started the procedure of grinding up the race song’s asphalt floor to get to the original clay beneath it. Approximately three-quarters of the floor, as it now stands, has been torn up. Veinote doesn’t view the contemporary condition of the song as a detriment. “A lot of people like to have a look at the mountains in front of them. However, I favor to have a look at the mountains I’ve already flown over,” stated Veinote, who owns an aviation enterprise together with his father, in addition to a production business.
“It’s a mess there right now; it’s far. But it’s also an open slate to do something one of a kind than some other race tune in the united states of America is doing.” Because the iciness snow melts, Veinote will move in the system to further grind the asphalt into a granular floor for racing on. It’s a move among asphalt and dust known as a mixture. “I’m now not positive if it’s going to paintings, but it’s were given a lot higher danger than (as a conventional inventory vehicle racing facility) that has a fifteen,000 nut just to open the region up,” Nason said.
