MOORESVILLE, N.C -- Located just down the road from the gleaming headquarters of JR Motorsports is the new, more modest home of Tommy Baldwin Racing.

Modest compared to JR Motorsports, that is. Compared to TBR's home a year ago -- a non-descript building several miles outside of town, surrounded by cornfields and seemingly built entirely of white sheet metal -- their new building is like another Garage Mahal.

"We're livin' high on the hog now," chirped one of TBR's employees recently as he stocked a refrigerator with Wave Energy Drinks and offered a slice of pizza left over from a team-building session marking the kickoff of the 2010 Sprint Cup season.

“

We knew at the beginning that we were going to pretty much be bringing a knife to a gun fight. To be honest with you, I knew it was going to take some time to build. I knew it was going to be hard.

”

-- TOMMY BALDWIN

That's all good news for Baldwin, a former Daytona 500-winning crew chief who started his own team barely one year ago and readily admits that simply still being around, and actually growing, are major accomplishments. The facts that a sponsor's drinks are filling the shop's dedicated beverage refrigerator and there is enough money in the coffers to order pizza -- let alone enough employees to devour several pies -- are other concrete signs of sustainable racing life.

"We're a little over a year old now. To see how we got started and where we're at now, how many people we've got working full-time, the kind of cars we're building now compared to year ago, plus all the business stuff and partner stuff ... it's exciting to see all that we've got going on," said Baldwin, who began with six contract employees in January of 2009 and said he now has 20 full-time employees.

This is the other end of the Sprint Cup racing spectrum from the mega-teams such as Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Childress Racing.

Baldwin, who served as crew chief for car owner Bill Davis when driver Ward Burton captured the 2002 Daytona 500, said he is convinced that if he can survive another year and continue to build on what he has, his fledgling organization can evolve into one of those types of teams some day. At the same time, he has no illusions about running consistently with the big boys anytime soon.

Not after last year, when TBR showed up at each of the 36 Cup races but failed to qualify for 11 of them and had to start-and-park in all but six others. Their best finish was 18th at Talladega last November with one-time driver Robert Richardson, but 22 times they finished 37th or worse -- including 15 times when they were one of the first three cars in the 43-car fields to park for the day.

"We knew at the beginning that we were going to pretty much be bringing a knife to a gun fight," Baldwin said. "To be honest with you, I knew it was going to take some time to build. I knew it was going to be hard. But I didn't know it was going to be that hard, with all the things we had going on.

"Toward the end of the summer, we started building better cars and helping our situation. We got with Wave Energy Drink and build a nice one-third of last season with them, and we've built on that. I think we ran six races all in all [last year] and this year we're up to 24 races that we can run [competitively]. We're working real hard to try to finish out the season, finding the money to do it." (Continued)