Ricky Craven
Craven in 1997
Born	Richard Allen Craven (1966-05-24)May 24, 1966 (age 59) Newburgh, Maine, U.S.
Achievements	1991Busch North Series Champion
Awards	1981 Unity Raceway Rookie of the Year 1990Busch North Series Rookie of the Year 1990, 1991Busch North Series Most Popular Driver 1992 Busch SeriesRookie of the Year 1995 Winston Cup SeriesRookie of the Year
NASCARCup Series career
278 races run over 11 years
Best finish	15th (2002)
First race	1991AC Delco 500 (Rockingham)
Last race	2004EA Sports 500 (Talladega)
First win	2001Old Dominion 500 (Martinsville)
Last win	2003Carolina Dodge Dealers' 400 (Darlington)
Wins Top tens Poles 2 41 6
NASCARO'Reilly Auto Parts Series career
142 races run over 14 years
Best finish	2nd (1993,1994)
First race	1986Oxford 250 (Oxford)
Last race	2006Goody's 250 (Martinsville)
First win	1991True Value 250 (Oxford)
Last win	1994Meridian Advantage 200 (Nazareth)
Wins Top tens Poles 4 57 7
NASCARCraftsman Truck Series career
26 races run over 2 years
Best finish	14th (2005)
First race	2004Sylvania 200 Presented By Lowe's (Loudon)
Last race	2005Ford 200 (Homestead)
First win	2005Kroger 200 (Martinsville)
Wins Top tens Poles 1 9 0
Statistics up to date as of December 2, 2012.

Richard Allen Craven (born May 24, 1966) is an Americanstock car racing analyst and former driver. Prior to his broadcasting duties, he was aNASCAR driver who won in four different series—the ARCA Menards Series, and the three national series.^[1]

He occasionally served as a pit reporter when NASCAR aired on TBS in the mid-1990s. Craven is perhaps most well known for winning the2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400, beatingKurt Busch in the closest finish inCup Series history at the time. A margin of victory, 0.002 seconds, only tied byJimmie Johnson andClint Bowyer in April 2011 atTalladega with Jimmie coming out on top. It stood for more than twenty years untilKyle Larson bestedChris Buescher by a margin of 0.001 seconds atKansas in May of 2024.

Craven began racing at the age of fifteen at Unity Raceway, winning twice as well as the Rookie of the Year award. The next year, he won 12 feature events and the track championship. In 1984, Craven raced at Wiscasset Speedway in the Late Model Division; in this year he won the track championship along with the Rookie of the Year title.^[2] After that, he began running in theAmerican Canadian Tour, where he had rampant success. In 1986, he made his NASCAR debut atOxford Plains Speedway in his own No. 12, finishing 25th after suffering an engine failure. Four years later, he began running the Busch North Series, winning the Rookie of the Year award. In 1991, he was named the champion in that series, winning ten times in the No. 25 Chevrolet, with two of those ten wins in "combination" races with theBusch Grand National Series, including the prestigious Oxford 250. In addition, he made his Winston Cup debut at Rockingham, starting and finishing 34th for Dick Moroso. He moved to the Busch Series full-time in 1992 in the No. 99 Chevy for Bill Papke, and once again was namedRookie of the Year. In 1993 and 1994, he finished second toSteve Grissom andDavid Green, respectively, in the championship standings. On October 9, 1994, Craven would serve as a pit reporter for TBS's broadcast of that year's Mello Yello 500, serving as a precursor to his broadcasting career.

In 1995, Craven teamed up withLarry Hedrick Motorsports andKodiak to run for Winston Cup Rookie of the Year. Craven qualified for all 31 races, finished in the top-ten four times, and defeatedRobert Pressley for the top rookie award. For his efforts, he was rewarded with a partial ownership share in the team. He began 1996 with three consecutive top-ten finishes and his first career pole. He was fourth in points before theWinston Select 500, during which he was involved in a multi-car wreck. On lap 130, his car was launched into the air and impacted with thecatch fence above the wall before being thrown back onto the track and hit by another car. This crash was similar^{[citation needed]} toJimmy Horton's barrel roll in 1993 where he cleared the track. Craven's flip completely sheared the catchfence off the turn, and NASCAR threw a lengthy red flag to make repairs. He walked away, but fell to twentieth in points and only had one top-five finish and one pole for the rest of the season

At the end of the year, Craven left Hedrick to drive the No. 25Budweiser Chevy forHendrick Motorsports.^[3] Craven finished in the top-five in the first two races of the season. He finished third in the1997 Daytona 500 behind his teammatesTerry Labonte in second andJeff Gordon in first, giving Hendrick Motorsports a 1-2-3 sweep of the Daytona 500. While practicing for the inauguralInterstate Batteries 500, Craven crashed hard into the wall. He missed two races due to a concussion suffered from the wreck. Upon his return, he won theWinston Open and finished a then-career-best nineteenth in points with a total of $1,139,860 in winnings for 1997. After the 1998 season started, the side effects of the concussion began to appear, and Craven was diagnosed withpost-concussion syndrome, and was forced to miss several races until he recovered. He returned at his home track atNew Hampshire International Speedway later that year, where he won the pole. After four races, he was released from Hendrick, and did not return until the final three races of the season, filling in forErnie Irvan atMB2 Motorsports.

For 1999, Craven signed on to drive the No. 58Ford Taurus forScott Barbour'sSBIII Motorsports, a brand new team in NASCAR. He did not finish any better than nineteenth while driving the car and after he failed to qualify for theCoca-Cola 600, he was replaced byLoy Allen Jr. Several weeks later, he signed up with another new teamMidwest Transit Racing, replacing rookieDan Pardus in the No. 50 and finished the season with them. Craven returned to the team in 2000 but after failing to qualify for four of the first nine races of the season, the team switched to a part-time schedule. Following this decision, Craven had four top-twenty finishes but finished 44th in points.

In January the next year, it was announced that Craven would replaceScott Pruett inPPI Motorsports's No. 32Tide Ford. He won the pole in the summer race atMichigan International Speedway, and in theOld Dominion 500 atMartinsville Speedway, he held offDale Jarrett for his first career Winston Cup win. In 2002, he won two poles, scored nine top-ten finishes, and finished a career-best 15th in points. In 2003, his team switched fromFord toPontiac, providing the No. 32 car with a factory-backed engine program. In theCarolina Dodge Dealers 400 atDarlington Raceway, he battledKurt Busch for the win, defeating him by .002 seconds in what was voted in December 2009 as the "Finish of the 2000s" in the Sprint Cup Series.^[4] In that race, he became the last person to win in a Pontiac. Craven failed to win races again that season and dropped twelve spots in the points standings. After he did not post a single top-ten finish three-quarters of the way through 2004, he was replaced byBobby Hamilton Jr., and only returned to run atNew Hampshire Motor Speedway, his home track. His last Cup start was the 2004EA Sports 500 at Talladega, where he drove in a development car forJoe Gibbs Racing, the No. 11 Chevrolet.

In 2005, Craven moved to theCraftsman Truck Series to drive the No. 99 Ford forRoush Racing. Craven was second in points after nine races, and there was talk about him being promoted toMark Martin's No. 6 Nextel Cup ride for 2006. However, a brutal stretch of finishes led to a free fall in the point standings, and it was announced that he would be gone from Roush at the end of the year. Craven did win at Martinsville Speedway late in the year, and finished fourteenth in points.

His final NASCAR start came at the Goody's 250 at Martinsville in the Busch Series forFitzBradshaw Racing in 2006. He finished 39th after the brakes failed on his No. 14 Dodge.

He eventually retired and worked forESPN andYahoo! Sports as a NASCAR analyst. In January 2019, he departed ESPN after 12 full years with the network to work forFox.^[5] Craven later left Fox at the conclusion of the 2020 season to pursue a new Ricky Craven Motorsports venture.^[6] He previously owned a motorsports dealership by that name inBelfast, Maine.^[7]

Craven graduated fromHampden Academy inHampden, Maine.^[8]

(key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time.Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

• Ricky Craven Biography
• Homestead-Miami 2003 Trackside Report
• Family, the outdoors bigger now for Craven
• End to Ricky and yahoo sports.

• Official Website
• Ricky Craven driver statistics at Racing-Reference
• Ricky Craven Fan Club Archive Website
• Ricky Craven ESPN Bio
• Ricky Craven at theMuck Rack journalist directory

• Living people
• 1966 births
• Sportspeople from Penobscot County, Maine
• Racing drivers from Maine
• NASCAR drivers
• American Speed Association drivers
• Hampden Academy alumni
• Hendrick Motorsports drivers
• Richard Childress Racing drivers
• Joe Gibbs Racing drivers
• RFK Racing drivers
• Daytona 500 drivers
• Coca-Cola 600 drivers
• Brickyard 400 drivers

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from December 2009