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By Buffy Swanson
Former Mr. DIRT Series titleholder Gary Tomkins is the latest driver to be selected to the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame elite. This year’s induction ceremonies—free and open to the public—will take place on Wednesday, July 10 at the Hall of Fame Museum on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
Growing up in MacDougall, NY, within spitting distance of Waterloo and other area tracks, Tomkins spent his summers chasing racing. His parents, Keith and Dot, were big fans and loved to travel—making friends wherever they went.
“Whenever guys up near Buffalo and north of there would come down to race—Terry Edwards, Mikey Granton, Cliff Norton—they’d all stop at our house,” Tomkins recalled. “As a little kid, I’d wake up in the morning and there’d be a Modified sitting in our driveway and people spread out all over our living room! That’s how it was when I was young. And I just fell in love with the Modifieds. As long as I can remember I always wanted to drive a Modified.”
But even back then, Modified racing was an expensive proposition—money that Tomkins didn’t have. So he settled for a Street Stock.
“In 1981, we found this 1970 Dodge Challenger around the corner from us and we traded one of our cars, even up, for it. Gutted it, took it to John Birosh and he put a roll cage in it,” Gary said. “That spring, we towed it to Canandaigua and that’s where my career started. I was 15 years old.”
The next three seasons, he tore up the tracks, posting 26 wins. “But by the time ’84 rolled around, our car was wore out,” Tomkins admitted. “My last year was my final year of high school. We raced, but only won twice.”
Unable to afford the jump to Modified equipment, Gary got a job working for chassis builder John Birosh while he attended community college. “At that time, Mike McLaughlin was building bodies for John, but he was also moving his way up the ranks in racing,” he said. In Mike’s absence, “John asked me to build a hood scoop—I guess it looked pretty decent, and the next thing you know I’m the guy building all the bodies.”
When Birosh was hired by Maynard Troyer in late ’86, Tomkins tagged along, fabricating sheet metal at the Rochester shop for the next 10 years. In the meantime, he gathered parts to piece together a Sportsman car, collecting 14 wins and Canandaigua’s division title in 1989.
But the dream was still to drive a Modified. “John was telling me, ‘Look, you’ve done everything you needed to do in the Sportsman,’” Tomkins recapped. “’You have to figure out what you need to do to get into a Modified.’”
He stood poised at the threshold, trying to get his foot in the door, helping Troyer star Danny Johnson at the tracks, and finally gaining some attention as Danny’s relief driver for one race in 1990.
“That must have gotten people thinking,” Gary considered. The following year, he replaced Curt Van Pelt in Darrell Simmons’ No. 32 and scored his first Modified victory in 1992.
“Darrell was a great guy but totally underfunded,” Tomkins noted. “His own paycheck was covering all the bills! Guys were starting to spend money on motors and cars and we were falling behind. But Darrell got my career started.”
The end of ’96, Tomkins replaced Alan Johnson in the Bill Trout Modified, with Stu Sheppard turning wrenches and Honeoye sponsor Doug Dulen, who bought out Trout in 2000 when Sheppard left to concentrate on his son Matt’s start in the sport.
Then, in late 2003, Tomkins finally hit the jackpot.
“I got a call from Jim Beachy,” owner of the high-profile Pillsbury Modified that Alan Johnson was driving, Gary explained. “It was out there that Alan had left the team but I never thought I had a chance of getting that ride. Then I got the call from Jim—‘Would you like to drive for me?’—and holy cow, it was like winning the lottery!”
Tomkins had a lot to live up to. “Of course, I’m putting pressure on myself because I know who drove that car—Alan Johnson, one of the greatest drivers ever as far as I’m concerned! I drove after him in Trout’s car, and here I was filling his seat again in Beachy’s car! He had just won Mr. DIRT two years in a row; he’d won Syracuse and all these big races. So I was putting a lot of pressure on myself.”
Their very first race as a team was a March Super DIRT Series event at Hagerstown, MD—a race Tomkins had won in Dulen’s car two years earlier. He was sweating as he steered the Pillsbury machine onto the track; he had a lot to prove. But right out of the box “the car was a rocket ship!” Gary reported in relief. “Back then we could use radios during series races—and they kept telling me to take it easy early on. But the thing just wanted to go to the front.”
After he beat back Tim Fuller to take the victory, “it literally felt like there was a big, huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” Tomkins exhaled. “I had two series wins; I was hopping in the car just vacated by the two-time Mr. DIRT champion. To win that race, first thing, probably sent us on our way to winning the title. I just felt so much more at ease, after that. I can do this! I can drive this car.”
In top equipment, with Hall of Fame crew chief Randy Kisacky calling the shots, Tomkins claimed another seven SDS victories for the team and—more importantly—the 2004 Mr. DIRT Series championship.
Crediting Kisacky, “we might’ve had one DNF the whole year,” Gary detailed. “There were five drivers with a shot at it. And we finished up front in all these series races—second at Syracuse to Tim Fuller, third to Brett Hearn and Billy Decker at Orange County. That’s what won it for us. It was a magical, magical year.”
After the Beachy operation dissolved in 2006, Gary had continued success with Doug Dulen, scoring five more SDS victories, and winning the Victoria 200 at Utica-Rome for Mike Payne in 2009. All told, Tomkins has accrued 146 career wins at 14 tracks in the U.S., Canada and even Australia during winter tours. He took the Brewerton Mod title in 2004, and was the Rolling Wheels Modified champion in 2004 and 2005.
Looking back on his long road to the Hall of Fame, Tomkins believes you’re only as good as the guys you race against.
“I’ve always said, if you wanted to race the best drivers, you went to Canandaigua. I learned a lot from racing those guys and getting beat by those guys,” he laid out the life lesson. “I can still remember one night at Canandaigua: I was leading, running the cushion, hard as I can, and Bob McCreadie comes up and drives by me like I’m parked. Nothing I could do! He was just that good.
“I’m happy I learned from them—how to race guys, how to respect guys—because it really helped me later on once I got in competitive cars.”
