“I didn’t really have anything else to do,” said Baldwin. “I felt that with the state of the economy, the amount of equipment that was for sale, and all of the good people available to work on the race cars that it was an opportunity to start building a race team… everything is going according to plan so far. We’ve made 80 percent of the races and we have eight cars in our fleet now and 11 full-time workers and four or five part-timers that come to help out, so I’m pretty proud of all the accomplishments our team achieved so far.”
 
To put the size of TBR in perspective, Hendricks Motor Sports, one of the biggest teams in NASCAR, has over 500 full-time staffers. They also feature the biggest names in the sport - Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and three-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. Their corporate sponsors are some of the most recognizable brand names, including Pepsi, Goodyear, Adidas, and Kellogg's.
 
TBR runs the #36 Toyota car, to be driven by Patrick Carpentier and Brian Simo for the 2009 Sprint Cup Series season. Carpentier was behind the wheel for the June 7th Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, PA, and finished 43rd overall. Carpentier, a veteran driver from Montreal who has driven in several different leagues, was only able to finish 32 laps. Baldwin considered the race a success as the team met its goal of making the race and building relationships with potential sponsors. TBR will probably skip the LifeLock 400 in Brooklyn, MI on June 14th, but Baldwin plans to run the complete Toyota/Safeway 350 in Sonoma, CA on June 21st.

Baldwin doesn’t think his team has yet to reach the level of Hendricks, Joe Gibbs Racing and the other upper echelon teams, but he has a lot to build on. “We’re showing up every week and we’re making the races, doing everything we can to stay alive,” he said. “Our goal is to show up on a Friday and make the race, run good in practice and run as good as we can and as long as we can in the race on a Sunday. My goal in the beginning was to race every single race until I ran out of money, load up and go to the next one and that’s what we’ve been doing. There are some weeks we have enough money that we can run the whole race and there are other weeks that we can’t. Until we find more money that’s what we have to keep doing to stay alive to be there when I think it’s going to count in a year or so.”
 
NASCAR and its teams are not immune to the current economic troubles, and it’s many of the smaller teams that are getting the worst of it. Baldwin believes that as long as his team can stay debt free and keep it small so they can be ready to expand when the time is right.
 
“We go right along with the economy. Unfortunately, we were heavily into the finance and banking, and all those types of companies that were a part of NASCAR have had to cut down considerably,” said Baldwin. “It has hurt our sport in a way as far as bringing money into the teams, but NASCAR is still very popular right now, there are a lot of good things happening on and off the racetrack. It’s important for us to go find people to build relationships with, so when they are ready to spend some money on marketing their product or taking care of their customers or employees we’ll be there for them.”
 
The popularity of NASCAR has been increasing for the past few decades. Baldwin was one of the millions of viewers that watched the first flag-to-flag broadcast of the Daytona 500 on February 18, 1979, right in the middle of a huge blizzard that covered much of the Northeast. The race was won by legendary driver Richard Petty. The sport has grown by leaps and bounds since, but it is still struggling to find a foothold in the New York area. With multiple area teams (including New Jersey) in every major sport to compete with, as well as professional golf and tennis, NASCAR has a lot to compete against for fan attention.
 
But Long Island has a long history with NASCAR and auto racing. The Riverhead Raceway is home to the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series racing. Freeport and Westhampton once had racetracks that frequently held races. Baldwin said he is seeing the signs of NASCAR’s rising popularity when he comes back to Long Island.
 
“I’m seeing more and more decals and car numbers of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Jr. on people’s back windows of their cars, so it’s getting pretty popular,” he said. “I’d say it’s more popular now than when I was growing up, maybe because there are some of us now that are from Long Island and part of NASCAR that people can follow. The sport is growing a lot, and the media and TV are to thank for that.”
 
They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. Tommy Baldwin Jr. is building his team from the ground up, one lap and one dollar at a time, and the NASCAR world is taking notice. With some New York gumption, it shouldn’t be too long before Tommy Baldwin Racing is one of the top teams in NASCAR.