FROM
A DREAM TO THE TEAM
Tom Baker’s involvement in motorsports spans over three decades, and it features a list of occupations, interests, innovative ideas, and business concepts that seeps quality as much as it does quantity. He's worked in the racing media in newspapers, radio, and television. He's worked at tracks as an announcer, race official, crew member, promoter, racer, spotter, and driver coach. Now 43, the future may provide the brightest moments for Baker’s career as the driver development specialist continues to build on a successful outfit he founded and now owns and operates in North Carolina.
Team Full Throttle, a race driver development program, has grown from a group of less than ten racers run out of Baker’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, to a leader in the development industry with over twenty of America’s top young racing talents competing under the TFT banner. The cutting-edge program features a comprehensive development and training process for its members that Baker tweaked and developed over a span of roughly twenty years of coaching and mentoring young people and young drivers throughout the country. Now aiming toward the upper echelons of American auto racing, Baker, his colleagues, and his drivers are working to tackle a common goal of making headlines in the top series of Motorsports.
But to understand Baker’s love and devotion to his business, it’s important to understand where he came from and what his influences were growing up.
Chapter
1 - The Early Years - Big O and A Set Of Drums
Baker grew up in Oswego, a city of about 17,000 on the south shore of Lake Ontario in Upstate New York. The city’s motorsports headlines are made by exotic open-wheel racecars called super modifieds, which race at the five-eighths-mile Oswego Speedway –a famed American short-track that sits only a few blocks from the house where Tom grew up. For a certain time, it was Baker writing those super modified-based sports headlines for the city’s Palladium Times newspaper.
“I first went to the speedway when I was 5 years old,” begins Baker. “My father was a longtime fan, and his first date with my mother was going to that track back in the 60's when it was still dirt. They took me in 1973, and I just absolutely loved the racing. My favorite driver was Jimmy Shampine, who is still a legend throughout Central and Western New York. The races at Oswego were the one thing I looked forward to every week and when I was old enough I started to get involved as more than just a fan.”
Baker alludes to a media-focused time early in his career which saw the native New Yorker host weekly radio shows, write for newspapers and magazines, announce at numerous speedways, and own Inside Groove, a cutting-edge radio show and Web site that covered local and national auto racing and gave a number of young racing writers a start.
“I started
writing for the Palladium Times. They had an ad for a motorsports writer so
I applied and got the job. That was in 1989, and the year after I began writing
for Trackside Magazine. So those were my first two jobs in racing, and I guess
it’s been nonstop, in one way or another, ever since.”
While racing always held a special place in Baker's life, so too did music. He picked up his first pair of drumsticks when he was just three years old, and eventually grew into the part of a professional musician, playing in a variety of local bands throughout his later teens and twenties, up until 2002 when he left the Central New York area. His musical talents also inadvertantly planted a seed that would eventually play a huge part in the development of Team Full Throttle.
"Just out of high school, I began working in a dixieland jazz band that featured a clarinetist named Tony Joseph. Tony was my high school band director as well, so he and I became friends, and he eventually asked me to come to the rehearsals of the high school jazz emsemble he conducted and do some work with his drummers, teaching them the feel and technique that it takes to play that type of music. I had been brought up by my Dad on jazz, so that's what I learned first. When I started trying to learn to play rock music, I understood from reading about famous drummers who had done both that it took a whole different mental approach to make that transition well. They're two different skills, basically, that just have the set of drums in common. Not everyone is good at both. So from that, I just used the same things I'd learned to teach the kids to go the opposite way - from rock to jazz based playing, and those experiences working on their "mental approach" to drumming eventually led me to applying the same knowledge in racing. It's funny how one thing can accidentally lead to something else like that sometimes. It's one of the more interesting and intruiging things about life, I think."
Chapter 2 - Microds and Media
1990 also produced Baker’s involvement in the Syracuse Microd Club, a group of about fifty racing families who compete in cars called microds, which are similar to quarter-midgets and race on a one-tenth-mile paved track at the New York State Fairgrounds. Baker first started as the club’s race director, then volunteered as a board of directors’ member and announcer.
A supporter and volunteer at the Syracuse club and other New York State microd clubs for over ten years, Baker credits the experience for sparking his interest in what is now referred to as “driver development.” His involvement in mentoring and playing a role of support in young racers’ careers has been a mainstay in Baker’s professional career ever since.
“The club had racers aging from 5 to 18 and I first got involved when I started traveling to Syracuse with the Salvadores, an Oswego family who raced at the track. Before talking to Joe Salvadore, I had no idea what a microd even was until he told me his kids raced them. I began coaching and spending time with some of the club’s drivers in the early nineties. I was writing for Trackside at the time and I did a few feature articles on some of the kids racing in the club. That was when I noticed a need to start preparing the kids for interviews and public speaking. I’d spend some time coaching them on giving a good interview and then I’d interview them for the article. Looking back, I guess that’s how I got into mentoring and coaching young racers. I was working with them on their attitude and approach as well, explaining to them how their behavior and decisions off the track directly effects their racing.” Tom recalled.
Though
his involvement in the club was a main focus throughout the nineties, it clearly
wasn’t Tom’s only interest. Besides his aforementioned musical explorations, he was a mainstay in the Oswego, NY media scene, at one point serving simultaneously as news director and morning show co-host for Oswego's top radio station (along with hosting his racing talk show there), and as feature writer and columnist for the Palladium Times newspaper. When the radio station was sold and the local staff disbanded, Tom moved to the
"That was a particularly exciting time in my life, because I also spent a year studying Radio and TV Broadcasting at one of the top community colleges in the country, after which the local radio station hired me full time and I got the news director's position. My thought at that time was that I had no need to finish school because in fact I had been hired full-time in my field. I teach my students all the time not to make that same decision, although I can also say that while I do wonder what might have happened after that second year, I think my past experiences and the chemistry of life experience they comprise probably make me more uniquely qualified to do what I'm doing now than someone who hasn't had those experiences. I've learned the hard way, and studied some of the world's most renown leaders and communicators along the way. I'm still learning. I learn something new every day!"
While at Ferris, Tom spent the next number of years continuing his involvement
in New York State microds and the Central New York racing scene through a
wide array of writing, announcing, and commentating positions, as well as continuing his radio work at a variey of area stations. Baker credits
Chapter
3 - Around The Tracks and Making The Move
One of the many peaks of Baker’s career came in 2000 when Harvey Fink hired him as general manager and promoter of Brewerton and Fulton speedways, both historic Central New York dirt tracks then owned by Fink. "I learned more from Harvey about promoting in one year than I could have ever thought I wanted to know. He really understands how a proper relationship between management and racers and fans should look. I'll never forget the lesson that any rule change made during the season that costs the racers more than 99 cents is a bad change. He sold the tracks but now I know he's back working for the newest owners and I'm happy for the racers and fans up there because they have him back now."
After
a valuable experience-gaining tenure promoting the mighty DIRT modifieds at
Brewerton and Fulton, Baker took an opportunity the next year to promote and
announce the asphalt mods at the Chemung Speedrome, the one-third-mile oval
where the Bodine brothers got their start. The position working for Bob Stapleton
at Chemung meant Baker’s move out of Central New York for the first time.
With the Stapleton-owned facility located on the New York-Pennsylvania border
in
“I absolutely loved Chemung,” says Tom, flashing a smile. “Part of me wishes I could still be there. Bob and his dad completely rebuilt the entire facility, mostly with their own hands, and it was beautiful. But, like a lot of tracks, consistent crowds were hard to come by and it was very difficult for Bob to make a profit and pay me a full-time salary. After the 2002 season, I had to find other ways to make money in the winter until Chemung reopened in the spring.”
Always
ready to seize an opportunity, Baker started working to find jobs throughout
the country until the green flag fell on Chemung’s 2003 season. One of the
gigs he had landed in 2001 was announcing JAM Promotions’ National Indoor
Karting Championships in Tunica,
"I remember that time in my life as being one of the most enjoyable. I was running around the country announcing races and meeting so many great people. I had always wanted to move to the Charlotte area, and had actually spent time there that season hunting for job prospects, so when Lanier asked me about working for him I guess I thought maybe that would be my chance to go South where the weather was better and challenge myself to make it work."
With his prospects in New York unclear, Baker decided to make the move to Memphis, leaving a life in the Northeast that had featured numerous close friendships, business relationships, and good times. "It wasn't an easy decision at all, but I knew I had to take the chance or I might have regretted it later."
Baker’s stay in Memphis lasted less than four years; although, his time in the city included the formal beginnings of Team Full Throttle, Baker’s aforementioned driver development business that continues to define the leadership and teamwork qualities Baker taught racers throughout his time working in the Northeast.
“TFT really started in New York because I had a number of drivers I was mentoring and coaching up there. While in Memphis one of the jobs I picked up was announcing the WKA Manufacturer’s Cup Series. It led me to more young drivers and it became obvious to me that I needed to make TFT an enterprise,” says Baker.
Baker
says that while announcing ManCup events he was amazed at the talent many
of the young WKA road racers possessed. He set out to recruit five specific
Man Cup drivers to his TFT program. Ultimately, four of those drivers joined
the program, three of whom are still top members of TFT today.
Chapter
4 - Making it official
By late 2004, TFT had grown to a dozen members. Baker continued to hone his craft of coaching drivers by spending numerous hours reading books, studying, and testing teamwork and leadership techniques and theories. While introducing creative scenarios and asking racers to look deep inside of themselves throughout the training sessions, he also incorporated influential experiences he lived into the trainings and coaching sessions. All of that hard work led him to go full-time with the Team Full Throttle venture.
Baker says it’s the people whom he learned from throughout his time in the sport that should be recognized as catalysts to the leadership and teamwork values TFT stresses to its drivers. “I’ve been able to learn from a number of terrific influences in my life, whether it was watching the respect Jimmy Shampine gave his fans and competitors, or the way Harvey Fink, Bill Shea, Bob Stapleton, or Lanier James led the businesses I worked for. Jim Lowery, Paul Szmal, Jim Ferlito - they’re all great leaders. I teach the drivers leadership because of the knowledge I’ve learned from these people. And of course my parents brought us up with the right sense of giving and self-motivation. Each step along the way I’ve had people teaching and coaching me. I’ve taken those lessons and found a niche in coaching young drivers that has proven to be very valuable to me.”
Today, the program comprises over a dozen drivers and is one of the most recognized and respected driver development programs in the nation.
While sitting in TFT’s Charlotte, North Carolina headquarters in the heart the racing industry – a place Baker admits he’s always longed for success – Tom prophesizes about where the road of life has taken him. He speaks articulately with the same type of candor in which he’s been teaching racers since a local friend brought him to a microd race nearly twenty years ago
“Sometimes you do things and you don’t really know what they mean or what they’ll lead to,” Baker added. “Going back to the microd days and even my work with the kids in the jazz band...I believe God has a plan for everyone, and looking back I realize that I was training in preparation for what I work at every day now. It’s strange how things work out, but it’s been a great time and I think the best is yet to come.”
Still humble, yet clearly more prideful than he’s ever been, Baker only stops to speak about the past for so long. Then he’s back working to help his – and, more importantly in his eyes – someone else’s future.
“It’s
just been recently that I guess I’ve really allowed myself to stop and realize
just how far the program has come in a few years time.
It’s really been an amazing experience meeting and working with so
many wonderful people who’ve become friends through the years, and seeing
so many young racers grow and learn from the program. This is really their
story. We know we're breaking new ground
here in some ways. Everybody who is involved with TFT is doing it
because it’s what we love to do. It’s
our living yes, but it’s our passion as well. This program is designed to
help young people grow and better themselves at anything they choose to do,
racing or not. As long as we’re accomplishing
that, we’ll keep doing it.”