Baldwin comfortable with post-ownership role

Tommy Baldwin said he remains fine with the decision he made to shut down his race team and sell his charter before this season. The 50-year-old NASCAR veteran also remains as busy as ever in the garage as he was recently named the competition director at Premium Motorsports in addition to the crew chief of the No. 15 team (pictured above).

"I think personally for myself and the situation and what was going on, yeah, they've been good decisions for me," Baldwin (pictured, courtesy of Premium Motorsports) told RACER. "I'm still here, I just don't have the business headaches anymore.

"I've been fortunate enough over the years to have been with really good race teams and win races and be successful. I just want to be able to get to that spot again of, look, if this little team can hit on a race or two during the course of the year and doing really well, that's all we can ask for."

Operations at Tommy Baldwin Racing ceased last November and until late last month, Baldwin had been overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Halmar Friesen Camping World Truck Series team. His partnership with Jay Robinson's organization had been in the works for a few months, with Baldwin saying the original plan was to begin things at the start of the new year.

"But a situation came about with the truck program not working out the way we wanted to and it just sped up the process, so we just decided to get it going now," Baldwin said. "Get some things in place, get some things worked out so we're in even better shape come January 1st."

With this move, Robinson has also acquired the remaining assets of TBR, but Baldwin says there remains a few obligations from his No. 7 team to be fulfilled in future races. Those details have already been worked out between Baldwin and Robinson with the sponsors aware beforehand and being "cool" with it.

Once that's settled, Baldwin said Robinson will take over the complete assets of TBR. Then going forward, Baldwin said he hopes see the Premium Motorsports organization performing better and more consistently.

"The first goal is by the end of the year get the team running where TBR was running in the mid to later [top] 20 pretty consistently. That's the first goal," Baldwin said. "Then, we're working on a lot of stuff for next year. We've got a lot of people [and] possibilities happening, which every team is going to say that right now. But we really do have some things going on. If they come about we'll get a little bit stronger.

"I think we understand where we can run with the amount of money that's behind us. If we can get there by the end of the year or in the very near future, that's goal one. Goal two will be making a stronger and more consistent team moving forward."