The Northeast Motorsports Museum will be built at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, NH in the spring of 2015. (Credit:Ticketmaster;com photo)

By Lou Modestino

The south entrance of New Hampshire Motor Speedway will begin to take on a new look once the snow melts. Speedway officials announced plans to break ground there for the future home of the 20,000 square foot state-of-the-art North East Motor Sports Museum. The museum will be built in two phases. The first 10,000 square feet will begin in the spring of 2015, while an additional 10,000 square feet will be added at a later date.

New Hampshire Motor Speedway will be celebrating a quarter century of racing in 2015. Tracing its roots back to the original 1/5-mile dirt oval at Bryar Motorsports Park, the more modernized 1.058-mile oval and 1.6-mile road course of today gives the affectionately known Magic Mile its own rich history of racing that makes it the perfect locale for such a project.

The speedway currently hosts everything from NASCAR’s three major touring series to regional series like the American-Canadian Tour, K&N Pro Series East, and Whelen Modified Tour to local racing series like the Granite State Legends Cars, Bandoleros, and Loudon Road Race Series (motorcycles). IndyCar and the Global RallyCross Championship have also held events at the speedway over the years, as well as various car clubs, racing schools, and driving experiences.

The RHPG, the parent corporation for the NEMSM, is made up of local prominent motor sports personalities, including Dick Berggren, Ricky Craven, Lew Boyd, Joe Freeman, Ken Smith, Russ Conway and Ric Mariscal to name a few. The NEMSM will be used to house the history of motor sports from the Northeast area with a plethora of displays, vehicles and racing-related artifacts.