Conversation: Ricky Craven

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Ricky Craven has had to prove himself before in the brutal world of NASCAR racing.

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He did so when he came from the Busch North Series as a highly successful graduate of the NASCAR Touring Division, and came within scant points of winning the Busch Series championship with crew chief John Monsam.

He did it again when he opened a stint with Hendrick Motorsports as part of a 1-2-3 HMS sweep of the 1997 Daytona 500. Not too many years later, after recovering from a serious head injury, he did it with PPI Motorsports when he scored his first NASCAR Cup victory, at Martinsville Speedway.

And most recently, after a drought of more than a year, he proved it with a sparky, grinding win over Kurt Busch in last March's Carolina Dodge Dealers 400.

On the eve of the next spring trip to Darlington Raceway, Craven took a break at Atlanta Motor Speedway to sit down with NASCAR.com senior writer Dave Rodman to discuss the prospects in his return to Darlington, working with his restructured team and how he's found solitude in the last uproarious year.

Coming back to Darlington Raceway, the site of one of the most spectacular two-lap runs to the checkers ever -- and your most recent win -- can you replay that finish?

Ricky Craven: I can certainly replay both for you. I know that we've watched the race several times and it was a great finish, because the only thing that Kurt Busch and I cared about for two laps was getting to the start/finish line first.

It was racing at its purest, in my mind. We bumped each other and we banged each other and we did everything but take one another out. We did everything but wreck one another.

At the end of the day, coming off Turn 4, we got side-by-side and we banged and bumped some more, but we still did not take one another out, and at the start/finish line it was the Tide team by two-thousandths of a second.

Coming to the 2004 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400, that finish will more than likely never be seen again, but can you end up in Victory Lane at Darlington this weekend?

Ricky Craven: We certainly can. There's no question at all that the track is one of my favorites. I like that type of racing where there's tire management and you have to race the track.

	Craven with team owner Cal Wells (right) Credit: Autostock

I think back to that race last year -- I didn't race another car until the last three or four laps. I ran that whole day racing the track, and although I scraped the wall a few times, the Lady In Black, on that day didn't get us.

I've had days where she has, and I think that was the risk, with three or four laps to go, that Kurt and I got caught up in racing one another and the racetrack reminded us who's boss.

So I'm going to go there with the same expectations that I had last year and when I went back for the September Southern 500. We finished top-10 then and went away disappointed, but we had a legitimate run and this week we're going to go back as the defending winner with a chance to win.

In the last year, how much have you revisited that finish, either with the family, friends, just floating on the lake? How much has it played back in your mind?

Ricky Craven: Not as much as I would have enjoyed or would have liked, until the season was over. And then I really sort of wound down and while we were up at our cabin in Maine for Christmas we stuck the tape in the VCR and watched it, and enjoyed it.

To have the anchor of a victory such as that seems pretty important, because from there, I won't say the bottom kind of fell out, but the rest of the season didn't measure up to what you achieved there.

Ricky Craven: Yeah, there's no question we hit a headwind the last month, month-and-a-half of the 2003 season, and that overshadowed some of what happened during the year.

The fact is, we did win and we were one of, I guess, like 17 teams that won; and that was rewarding. But you measure yourself every week and we want to get back on track, and because of the finish at Darlington last year, nothing will totally satisfy us but a win.

Because of what seemed to be a frustrating second half of the last season, what was the rock you went to, to maintain your sanity?

Ricky Craven: You know, that's just the world we live in. It's one against 42 every week, and it's probably more like golf than any other sport, in that there's such a premium on winning that you can go for awhile without having won, and winning is always the reference.

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Standing in Victory Lane at Martinsville or Darlington is my reference to say, if we can have those types of days, then we can revisit Victory Lane.

The great thing about Martinsville and Darlington is that it's the difference between believing you can and knowing you can. You know, we won those races and that was worth so much -- it was very, very valuable, not only to me as a driver but to this company and this team.

There is such a big difference between believing you can, and pushing and pushing because you believe that you can; as opposed to saying, 'we did. We can win this like we did Martinsville and like we did Darlington.'

That is a big advantage.

As if the trials and tribulations on the racetrack weren't enough, you had the fire up at your shop in Maine. What's been happening up there since last year?

Ricky Craven: Well, we closed the brick-and-mortar side of it because we lost everything. I actually flew up the Monday after Darlington and I couldn't believe the destruction.

I reached down and I picked up a coin from the ashes. It was nearly perfect, a coin from one of the die-cast sets, and I don't know how it survived or how it stayed in the condition that I found it.

But I put it in my pocket and it was the only thing that I took from that property. We lost a tremendous amount of valuables, you know? We lost all of our inventory -- everything as it relates to the business.

But beyond that, we lost trophies, we lost helmets, we lost uniforms, pictures...

I had a couple of pictures that were very personal. One was of Jeff Gordon and I at Bristol -- a candid shot that I really liked. And then one of Dale Earnhardt and I, I think at Michigan.

But they were things that I will not be able to replace, and we were taken aback by that. That dealt us a big blow. That was a family business that my mom and my sister helped to operate and boy, it's frustrating.

Do you have plans to rebuild it?

Ricky Craven: My priority is to race this Tide Monte Carlo for three more years and to go out every week and to give everything I have -- 100 percent -- and that's my commitment to Cal Wells and to Tide and to the team.

But I do have to confess to you that that was a bit distracting at the time, and there was a void that I may someday fill. I may rebuild that business, but at this time there's just no way we can do it and do it the way we would like to and to still be a Nextel Cup driver.

The online aspect of the business, RCM North, still exists. My sister continues to run that along with my mom's help and it's a legitimate company and it does well.

But I miss not going to the shop, the dealership. I did it four times a year -- each quarter -- and went up to sign autographs because they were always four- or five-hour autograph sessions.

People from Maine would come -- from all over New England. It was awesome, and I miss that.

Getting back to 2004, it's been a season of change. How's it been with the transition to Chevrolet; a new crew chief, Dave Charpentier; Mike Beam coming back; and the new aero and tire package?

Ricky Craven: Well, it's been good. We've improved our qualifying from the second half of last year. I've still got a fantastic crew. Our cars continue to improve and they're very good racecars that are built in-house.

We've got an engine program that's evolving. Mike has come back and Dave's the crew chief and we've just got a lot of things that are encouraging. I can definitely see the momentum getting better and better.

Moosehead Lake in Maine has always been your refuge. How much time have you been able to spend there, lately?

Ricky Craven: I haven't spent much time there lately, but it has become our sanctuary. It's a place where we can go and be a family. We're allowed to be a family because we're left alone, and we see more wildlife than we do people.

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It's just been perfect. I came to that conclusion -- I don't want to say lying in intensive care -- but it was shortly after the Texas wreck, in 1997.

I just said, 'There's got to be a balance to all of this.' So within a few months we started building a log home on Moosehead Lake and it's just awesome.

We spend summers there, we spend two weeks every Christmas. Thanksgiving. It's perfect.

When you talk about balance, talk a little bit about the snowmobile ride you do in January, and what other charity events you might have coming up?

Ricky Craven: That event has created sort of a life of its own. My mom deserves a lot of credit for being the catalyst. Sure, we started that seven years ago -- 1998 was our first ride -- and it's amazing how big it's become.

You look at the people, you look at the fans, you look at the family -- everybody rallied behind that and raised $253,000 this year. You say, 'wow! In the northern part of Maine, in the coldest part of the year, to be able to raise a quarter-of-a-million dollars.'

That's a credit to the world we live in and the generosity of people.

What's your take on having SAFER barriers at Darlington this weekend?

Ricky Craven: I think that it's wonderful. Again, the track is challenging and with the barriers cutting down the width it'll probably be more challenging, but I'm OK with that.

You know, I'm not going to find a negative in Darlington and International Speedway Corporation making an attempt to make the sport safer -- I just don't think that's appropriate.

From a driver's standpoint, if the track is narrower, doesn't that just mean you find a new line?

Ricky Craven: That's all you do. I mean, that wall is what prevents us from going faster everywhere. That's the perimeter, or one of the hurdles that you face.

The track's become a little smaller, in essence. It's still going to produce quality racing and I'm cool with it.

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