“That Was the Guy I Wanted,” Mark Martin’s Tommy Baldwin regret reveals the fight behind the No. 6

Mark Martin says he once convinced Tommy Baldwin Jr. to become crew chief of the famed No. 6 car, only for the move to collapse when Baldwin’s $500,000 asking price proved too steep for Jack Roush and the rest of Roush Racing’s pay structure. Martin had gone out and found the crew chief he wanted for the famed No. 6 car. He had convinced Baldwin to come. He had the number. And then, just like that, the deal stalled at the shop door.

What could have been a major personnel shake-up ahead of the 2004 NASCAR season instead became one of the great “what ifs” of Martin’s time with the organization, a missed hire that, in Martin’s mind, cost the team far more than money. Years later, his retelling of the failed pursuit does more than revive an old negotiation. It exposes the tension inside a growing multi-car powerhouse, where Martin no longer felt the No. 6 team commanded the singular focus he believed it needed to win at the highest level.

For Martin, this was never simply about salary. It was about survival at the sharp end of NASCAR’s most competitive era. By 2004, Roush Racing was no longer just Mark Martin’s house. It was a superteam, deep with talent, heavy with infrastructure, and crowded with competing priorities. Martin, one of the organization’s defining stars, no longer wanted balance. He wanted force. He wanted a crew chief with enough clout, enough edge and enough fight to make sure the No. 6 still got treated like the No. 6.

Martin was coming off a frustrating 2003 season, one in which the No. 6 had slipped from the standard he had spent years building. The rebound came in 2004, when he won at Dover and finished fourth in the final standings. But Martin’s version of history makes clear that even in a comeback year, he believed the team was missing something essential. What he wanted, more than anything, was a fighter.

1. The $500K Handshake

The first striking part of Martin’s story is how close it came to becoming real. As Martin put it, Roush often operated with an old-school directness when it came to staffing needs around the No. 6 team. If the car needed a specialist, Martin would be sent to find one. If the team needed a crew chief, he would go sell the opportunity himself. He said, “So, we spoke on this before about Tommy almost was my crew chief for ’04. When I drove for Jack Roush, this is the way it was done: ‘Mark, go get a new tire changer. We need a tire changer.’ I’d go recruit one, they’d bring him to Roush, he’d want too much money, so then we’d just train one. Same thing with Tommy. It was ‘go get you a crew chief, need a new crew chief.’”

2. $500,000 Threatened Roush Racing’s Entire Salary System

The dollar figure is the detail that sticks, because it sounds jarring when Martin drops it so casually. But when he brings up the number, he is really talking about market value; about what elite leadership cost in a NASCAR garage that was becoming more sophisticated by the year. He said, “Yeah, that was the going rate for a badass like that… it was actually 2004, but that was the going rate for a top hot dog crew chief. But we were running four teams right then and all our guys were making 250.” The issue was not that Baldwin’s ask was absurd. Martin makes the opposite point. To him, that was exactly what a top-tier crew chief should have cost. The issue was that Roush had built a large multi-car structure with its own internal salary logic, and Baldwin’s price would have blown right through it. By 2004, Roush was not operating like a one-car outfit built around a single driver and his preferences. It was a sprawling Cup operation with multiple teams, multiple stars, and increasingly shared expectations across the board. A crew chief making twice what other internal leaders were making would have been more than just a financial decision. It would have been an organizational statement.

3. The Real Reason Mark Martin Demanded an Aggressive Crew Chief for the No. 6

The most important part of Martin’s recollection comes after the salary talk, because this is where he stops discussing Baldwin as a hire and starts describing him as a weapon. Not a schematic thinker. Not simply a smart race strategist. A fighter. Martin’s words here are the emotional center of the story: “And let me tell you why I wanted Tommy Baldwin and I should have paid it, but I guess I had my head in my ass. I wanted that guy that you play the video of where he’s throwing his headphones off and saying, ‘I’ve had enough of you effers!’ That was the guy I wanted.” Martin then strips the issue down to its essence. “I needed that guy to stand there and fight for the 6 car because we had four other race teams, four other cars. You had Jack Roush, and I was used to getting what I wanted on the 6 car, and at this point, it became a democracy,” he continued. Martin provided a glimpse into what happens when a flagship driver realizes the organization around him has changed. Roush’s growth gave the team strength, depth and reach, but it also created compromise. More cars meant more agendas. More teams meant more voices. More success meant the No. 6 no longer stood alone at the center of everything. He had the name. He had the buy-in. He had the conviction. What he did not have, in the end, was the final push to make it happen. And so the No. 6 moved forward without the crew chief Martin believed could have given it a harder voice and a sharper elbow inside the walls of Roush Racing.

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• Mark Martin
• Tommy Baldwin