VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

(Photo Credit: ACT/Thunder Road)

Waterbury

2014 David K. Hakins Memorial Award inductee (motor sports)

Longtime auto racing promoter and administrator Tom Curley is the 2014 Vermont Sports Hall of Fame David Hakins Memorial Award inductee that honors a business leader or an organization for exceptional promotion and development of sports, athletics and recreation in the state of Vermont. It is named in memory of the late David Hakins, a businessman who was a founding member of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame and the inspirational first president of its board of directors. 

One of the premier and most innovative short-track stock car promoters in the country, Curley is the driving force behind the American-Canadian Tour as well as Barre's Thunder Road Speedbowl, “The nation’s capital of excitement!".

A native of Maine who also resides in Scarborough, Curley was a driver from 1964 to 1969. He returned to the stock car scene in 1978 in a management role and served as the NASCAR Northeast regional director (1979-1985), at which time he left NASCAR to form ACT, which today is still one of the finest Late Model Sportsman series in the country. He also co-founded the Stock Car Connection, an ACT alliance with the ASA and All-Pro. 

An owner of Thunder Road, Curley received the Don MacTavish Award for contributions to New England motor sports in 1991. He managed Oxford Plains Speedway in Maine for four seasons, leased numerous tracks in Canada for ACT-affiliated events and did extensive work on motor sports for CBS, TNN Motor Sports and TBS. 

He was named Northeast Promoter of the Year by the RPM membership three times, was twice nominated for North American Promoter of the year and was named the 2004 North American Promoter of the year by RPM membership. The 1992 Trackside Magazine readers’ poll named him the promoter of the year in 1992 and Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., named him National Short-track Promoter of the Year in 2003. 

Curley, who attended Norwich University, was inducted into the New England Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 2009. He was active in the operation of Thunder Road and the ACT, and was a presence in auto racing in the state right up to his death at age 73 in 2017.