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By Robin Yasinsac-Gillespie
From an early age, crew chief Tommy Conroy knew what he wanted to do in life. So it is no surprise that Conroy was chosen to receive this year’s Mechanic/Engineering Award from the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame, to be presented during July 24th ceremonies at the Hall of Fame Museum located on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
“My father and uncle would bring me to Dick Hicks’ fabrication shop a couple days a week after school,” recalled Conroy, who lived nearby in Halfmoon, NY. “I was 12 years old and I was learning how to rebuild transmissions and rear ends, welding, helping to fix front clips and building rub rails and stuff like that. It was pretty cool.”
A few years passed and, through Hicks, the young Conroy was introduced to race car owner Jody Gable—known for having top-notch equipment and a big wallet. Plus, he had superstar Brett Hearn steering for the team.
“I was probably 15 or 16 at that time,” said Conroy. “At that point I was doing tires with Jay Castimore [Hearn’s tire specialist] at Lebanon Valley for a few years. I think the first race I traveled to was Middletown. It was a great experience for a kid my age.”
Conroy graduated from high school in 2005, when Hearn was running Vinny Salerno’s small-blocks. So he packed his bags and moved to Salerno’s house for a couple of years and worked full-time in Hearn’s New Jersey race shop. But in order to be able to leave home and go out on the road—Conroy had an agreement to keep.
“When I came to work for Brett I was originally enrolled in Hudson Valley Community College for mechanical engineering—so the deal was that if I dropped out of college and went to work for Brett, I had to further my education,” explained Conroy.
He enrolled at the NASCAR Technical Institute in North Carolina, and also got to lend his talents, plus learn new ones, in NASCAR driver Kenny Schrader’s race shop.
“When you go to school at NTI, everything is in shifts. So you either go in early and you’re done about lunch time. Or you go in late and you’re there until 8-9 o’clock at night. I was going to school at night so I would work at Schrader’s until noon and then head to school,” Conroy detailed. “We did races with Kenny Wallace and Brian Shirley. Did a race in Illinois with Schrader. It was a good experience for the time that I was there.”
He still commuted North to crew for Hearn in all the major events, before returning for good to work alongside Brett’s crew chief and his good friend Andrew Phillips.
“We worked side-by-side,” Conroy said. “We had a pretty good system— he would start at one end of the car and I would start at the other end and we would meet in the middle. We had a good thing going for a long time.”
It was a time frame loaded with one success story after another. Hearn’s team set the stage for how a professional race team should operate and others wanted to emulate them. They made it look easy.
During that time they landed all the biggies: big- and small-block events at the New York State Fairgrounds, three big-block 200s and five small-block races during Eastern States weekend at Orange County Fair Speedway, two Lebanon Valley Speedway 200s, a Fulton Speedway Outlaw 200, a Rolling Wheels 200, four wins at Hagerstown Speedway’s Octoberfest, 20 Super DIRT Series wins, nine track championships, two Florida titles, the DIRTcar 358 Series and two DIRTcar Modified Series.
It was a role for Conroy that lasted for eight years; an experience that was the envy of many. And he learned a lot—lessons that Tommy carries with him daily in his personal and professional tribulations.
“Brett calls it ‘the system,’” laughed Conroy. “I call it the ‘Brett Hearn Way’ and that’s still how I try to operate. ”
But like many in the sport eventually find—Conroy got burnt out. It became too much. The long hours in the race shop and the miles on the road got old so he moved back to his hometown outside Albany.
“I needed to do something different,” Conroy said. “A lot of it was just trying to have more of a home life. My goal when I came back was to not work in motorsports anymore.”
That goal was short-lived. Before long he was back working for family/good friend Dick Hicks; and then he was approached about handling a driver’s team at Albany-Saratoga and Fonda Speedway. Conroy got the guy to victory lane six times before they parted ways. He did that for three years and still helped Hicks out during the off season.
In 2017, his stellar resume and friendship with Stewart and Jessica Friesen put him in the role of handling the popular race couple’s Modified team.
“We work around Stew’s NASCAR Truck schedule and what Jess and their son Parker want to do. So you never really know where you are going to end up between the two of them,” explained Conroy. “It’s always interesting.”
And like his days with Hearn—the success is plentiful.
Since signing on with the Friesens, Conroy has crewed the team to victory in Super DIRT Week Modified and 358 events, three Eastern States big-block 200s and two 358 Modified 100s at Orange County Fair Speedway, a pair of Fonda Speedway 200s, a $50,000 payday at Port Royal Speedway, and a 2021 sweep of the Modified card at Bristol Motor Speedway.
They’ve been the team to beat in all the “crown jewel” events on the circuit—due in no small part to Conroy’s work ethic.
“It’s not as easy as everyone thinks it is,” he said, noting the time spent away from his wife Kayla and 22-month-old daughter Karsyn. “It does take a lot of sacrifice.
“But then you have times like Oswego last year. It was stressful but what a weekend!” Tommy lit up. “We set fast time, we won our heat race, and we led every lap [of the feature event]. I don’t think that’s ever been done!
“It’s times like that you couldn’t ask for anything better.”
