Ralph Cusack

Competitor, Track Owner, Promoter
CLASS OF 2001

Ralph Cusack has a distinctively unusual set of credentials New England auto racing community. He was a very successful driver and he followed up that career by being a highly admired track owner and promoter.

Cusack won an amazing 12 track championships at Beech Ridge Speedway. He won 7 Class A Championships (1953, 1958-59, 1962-1965). 4 straight Super Modified Championships (1975-1978) and a Modified Championship in 1980. One night in late 1975, Cusack won the completion of a rain-postponed super modified race, then the regularly scheduled 50 lapper super modifieds, then capped the night off with a 3rd in the late model division.

The following year, 1981, Ralph purchased the Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. During the winter of 1985-86, Cusack reconstructed and repaved the Maine oval.

Cusack is a charter member of the Beech Ridge Hall of Fame, and is a winner of the Beech Ridge Memorial Blazer Award in 1971. Other honors he’s earned through his association with auto racing include the Outstanding Weekly Short Track Operations award, presented by Racing Promotion Monthly in 1989, and the Outstanding Contributions to Short Track Racing award, given by the American-Canadian Tour.

In 1992, he was nominated as the Upper East Region Promoter of the Year, and was a nominee for National Promoter of the Year, again by Racing Promotion Monthly. Ralph was given the Beech Ridge Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. That same year, the Northeast Motorsports Expo named him the Northeast Motorsports Promoter of the Year.

Cusack secured a NASCAR sanction for Beech Ridge in September of 1994, and NASCAR presented him with their Administrative Award of Excellence the following year, in 1995.

Ralph Cusack passed away on February 9, 2021 just a week shy of his 88th birthday.