UNITY — Unity Raceway is ready to open this summer season.

Greg Veinote of Newburgh has agreed to hire the power from track owner Ralph Nason. Veinote, fifty-three, hopes to have the power — the start of stock vehicle racing in Maine — open with the aid of the give up of June with a choice to shop for the track inside the future. “We started on this whole element remaining summer season,” Veinote said. “We were to date apart on an actual buy price 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 the motive that I’m going to shop for it.”

Auto racing: Unity Raceway to open once more this summer time 1

Neither Veinote nor Nason could reveal financial info of the settlement, although Veinote stated he had 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, as a minimum, with the aid of Maine’s vehicle 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 wider view of the assets. In addition to 4- and 6-cylinder racing divisions making use of the present race music and the song’s infield, occasions will make a probable variety from lawnmower races and tractor pulls to different motorsports enjoyment styles. The car suggests and cruise nights and different family-oriented occasions, also are in play, Nason and Veinote stated.

“Right now, it’s referred to as Unity Raceway, but I need it to be known as Unity Raceway and Fairgrounds,” said Veinote, who hopes to maintain about 5 or six racing events this season. “I’ve been busy getting anybody so as. It’s going to take a huge effort on our element to make everything come out the way I want and make humans proud to force past Unity Raceway once more.”

Veinote and Nason have previously carried out commercial enterprise together. In 2007, Veinote offered Spud Speedway in Caribou from Nason earlier than selling it to Troy Haney much less than three years later. At the time, Spud Speedway has been dormant for nearly seven years. Nason embraces the belief that something unique is wanted at the track, which opened for stock automobile racing in 1948. Nason, of Unity, bought the music in 1980.

“You want to have something wherein people don’t need to spend 30 grand for a race automobile to race for 22 bucks (in purse money),” Nason stated. “The coin is lopsided as hell. If you may carry it back to something where human beings can come as a family unit, have a blast, move home speaking about it, and didn’t spend an entire week’s paycheck to do it, they’re going to return.

Nason entered into a settlement to sell Unity Raceway to Benton’s George Fernald in 2016. Fernald planned to return the track to its original dirt oval even as finishing some of the capital enhancements the prevailing centers. When his fitness declined, Fernald needed to go back the music to Nason.

Following the entirety of the 2017 season, Fernald began the procedure of grinding up the race music’s asphalt floor so one can get to the unique clay below it. Approximately three-quarters of the surface, as it now stands, has been torn up.

Veinote doesn’t view the modern circumstance of the music as a detriment.

“A lot of humans like to examine the mountains in front of them, but I favor to look at the mountains I’ve already flown over,” said Veinote, who owns an aviation commercial enterprise along with his father, in addition to a creative enterprise. “It’s a multitude there proper now; it’s miles. But it’s also an open slate to do something special than every other race music within we of a is doing.”

As quickly as the winter snow melts, Veinote will flow in the device to grind the asphalt into a granular surface for racing. It’s a cross among asphalt and dust known as a mixture.

“I’m no longer sure if it’s going to work, but it’s got loads better threat than (as a traditional inventory automobile racing facility) that has a 15,000 nut simply to open the vicinity up,” Nason stated.