Tommy Baldwin Jr., the competition director at Rick Ware Racing, does not appreciate the way Legacy Motor Club characterized the eponymous team owner in a lawsuit over a charter purchase agreement gone awry last week.
The comments were made on Door Bumper Clear, the Dirty Mo Media podcast co-hosted by Baldwin on Monday.
“The thing that hurts is that they’ve come out and said a lot of bad things about Rick Ware,” Baldwin said. “And I’m here to tell you, you can say all you want about what goes on at the track and on the track, and the things we’re trying to do but I can tell you Rick Ware is not any one of those things as a person, as an individual, as a father, as a family member as what they’re making him out to be.
“It’s heartbreaking to see him have to go through this. I was sick and I was hurting with cancer for six to eight months and that man took care of me. That man paid me. That’s man is Rick Ware. That’s the guy he is and he has worked his ass off to be in this position to be able to sell a charter and live the rest of his life the way his family can live. He deserves that.”
Baldwin, of course, was limited in what he could say about the actual allegation in the lawsuit, which claims Ware and Legacy had an agreement to sell a charter that was signed and initialed but ultimately not consummated.
He also praised Ware for the business acumen he didn’t have as a former Cup Series team owner, who sold his charter after the 2016 season.
“Shame on me for not having the balls he had, not waiting to sell mine,” Baldwin said. “I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I couldn’t deal with the political mess. I couldn’t deal with the people. I couldn’t deal with people screwing me all the time. I couldn’t deal with it. This guy has survived it this whole time and I don’t know how he has done it. He’s just in the background, doing his business, setting himself up and his family to live the rest of their life comfortably.
“That’s his prerogative. He deserves it. He put himself in that position. Listen, I will fight for Rick Ware and anybody, right, because that is not Rick Ware.”
Last year, the Ware team was really competitive with Justin Haley, so competitive in fact, that Spire Motorsports completed a rare trade of drivers to land him a year early.
“Let me tell you something,” Baldwin said. “Rick Ware was spending millions of his own money for Justin Haley. They didn’t have enough money to sponsor the full year. Nobody has. It got to the point that Rick was like, look, ‘If I’m going to spend my own money, I’m going to spend it on my son. I’m not going to spend it anymore on anyone else’s career,’ and that was a major decision that he made and he got Robby and I together and said, ‘this is my decision and you guys are going to make it work because this is what I want.’
“Alright. This is what we’re going to do.”
