Tommy Baldwin Racing secures NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour owners' championship

Tommy Baldwin Jr. has a lot to be thankful for this year.

His Tommy Baldwin Racing team found its footing on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, leading to a dominant season that ended Thursday at Martinsville Speedway with the team clinching the owner championship for the first time.

It was years in the making for Baldwin.

“It‘s been in the works a long time,” said Baldwin, who clinched the owner championship when the green flag waved for the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200. “It‘s something that, growing up, especially before I moved south, it was definitely something you wanted to accomplish. I kind of did it backwards, right? I won a championship after I moved down south and became pretty successful at the Cup level.”

Baldwin grew up in NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour pit areas up and down the East Coast with his father, Tom Baldwin Sr. The elder Baldwin raced with the Tour for 20 years, earning six victories before dying in a crash in 2004.

His son carried on the family racing tradition, becoming a successful crew chief at the NASCAR Cup Series level. He later owned his own NASCAR Cup Series team, fielding cars for drivers like Michael McDowell, Geoffrey Bodine, Dave Blaney, Steve Park, Alex Bowman and Bobby Labonte, among others.

However, his heart was always with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.

Baldwin returned to the Tour as an owner full-time in 2020, but it wasn‘t until this year that his program hit its stride.

With Doug Coby, Jimmy Blewett and Mike Christopher Jr. splitting driving duties of Baldwin‘s No. 7, the team emerged as the top program on the Tour this year.

“Obviously all three of them have very, very good talent,” Baldwin said of his drivers. “They‘re all capable of winning races no matter what car they get into. I got lucky enough to get all three of them into mine.”

It started with Coby, who wasn‘t originally scheduled to drive the No. 7 this year, when he drove to victory in the third event of the season at New York‘s Riverhead Raceway.

Coby added two more victories in the No. 7 for Baldwin at New Hampshire‘s Lee USA Speedway and Virginia‘s Langley Speedway. In all, Coby made nine starts in the No. 7 and never finished worse than 10th.

RELATED: Doug Coby’s 2022 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour stats

“What I told Tommy from the beginning was if it‘s just this race, or just these two races, then that‘s awesome,” Coby said. “It turned into a few more over the course of the season and ultimately ended with a true team effort to capture the championship amongst all of us.”

Originally the plan for the season was for Blewett to pilot Baldwin‘s No. 7 for most of the season, with Christopher making a handful of starts at events Blewett couldn‘t make. However, when Blewett‘s daughter got sick, Baldwin needed to find someone to drive his car while Blewett focused on his family.

Baldwin called Coby, who admits he was a bit surprised when Baldwin reached out about the opportunity.