Tom Curley

Track Owner, Promoter
CLASS OF 2009

Tom “T-Bone” Curley drove a race car from 1964 to 1969, then hung up his helmet and left the sport for a few years. He reemerged in the late 1970’s as an official. He was NASCAR Northeast Regional Director that oversaw the Northern NASCAR Circuit, and then the NASCAR North Tour from 1979-1985. Curley parted ways with NASCAR after the ’85 season and then formed the American Canadian Tour (ACT) in 1986, which he remained affiliated with for the remainder of his career.

The blueprint of spec motors, universal rules and controlled costs that Curley implemented on the ACT has been adopted by several New England tracks for their weekly program.

In 1982, Curley teamed up with Ken Squier to regain control of Barre, VT’s Thunder Road Speedbowl, one of the nation’s most successful short track operations. He was known for his strong belief in the ladder system of building stars and maintaining a focus on having healthy entry-level & intermediate divisions to feed the headlining divisions.

Curley memorably competed in a 300 lap enduro race at Beech Ridge Speedway in September of 1984. An amazing 114 cars started the race, and Curley outlasted all of them to take down the victory.

Curley was named RPM’s North American Promoter of the Year in 2004. He was also the RPM Northeast Promoter of the Year three times. He was also named Promoter of the Year by Trackside Magazine in 1992 and Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Short Track Promoter of the year in 2003.

Tom has leased and operated tracks throughout the northeast, including Airborne Park Speedway (NY), Catamount Stadium (VT) and Oxford Plains Speedway (ME).

Tom Curley passed away on May 5, 2017 after a long battle with CPOD. He was 10 days shy of his 74th birthday.