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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Tommy Baldwin Q&A
Tommy Baldwin is the newest NASCAR Sprint Cup team owner, having announced that he intends to run the full schedule in 2009...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted January 07, 2009   Harrisburg, NC
Tommy Baldwin, pictured here at Indianapolis in 2005 as Crew Chief of the No. 9 Dodge and driver Kasey Kahne, is the newest NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team owner that intends to run the full 2009 schedule. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Tommy Baldwin has been around race cars for most, if not all, of his life. The son of the late, legendary New England modified racer Tom Baldwin Sr., the younger Baldwin is one of the most experienced racers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage.

He is also now the newest NASCAR Sprint Cup owner, having announced Tuesday that he intends to run the full Cup schedule in 2009. Baldwin has purchased several Toyota Camrys from Red Bull Racing and will use motors built by Martinsville, Va.-based Arrington Manufacturing. Based in Mooresville, N.C., TBR will be a small, low-cost operation. Baldwin said he hopes to name a driver and a sponsor within the next couple of weeks.

On Wednesday morning, Baldwin spoke with SPEEDtv.com about his plans. Excerpts follow:

With the economy so poor, why start a team now? The reason why we did it is that opportunity is definitely here. We’ve got a brand-new team with low overhead, we don’t owe anybody any money and we cut all the overhead we know we possibly can without hurting on-track performance, without hurting hospitality and taking care of our sponsors and all our partners.

We’re a pretty well-rounded group. We built a good group that can do all the things that all the big teams can do right now for a fraction of the cost.

I felt that the timing was right. There are a lot of good people out there, looking for work.

Did the smaller car counts expected in 2009 influence your decision to start a Cup team? That was part of the equation, yeah, but companies just don’t have $15-$20 million to sponsor cars any more. They don’t have it, but they still need to market their products, they still need to take care of their customers, they still need to take care of their employees.

So here we are with a good company, that’s going to have a good driver — I’m going to still crew chief it, because that’s probably my strongest part of the business. We’ve got a good crew. What else do you need? We’re going to run Toyota product, run Toyota engines with Joey Arrington. All the pieces are here, we’ve just got to finish putting them together.

How big will your team be? We’ve got about 11 guys hired right now and we’re going to keep growing as things unfold.


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