Tom Davey, a champion race driver whose day job as writer and filmmaker produced a body of work that has enriched motorsports for decades, passed away Tuesday morning at age 81. One of his proudest achievements has been the creative evolution of SAFEisFAST.com, launched by Jim Mullen in 2010 with grants by the FIA’s Institute for Motorsport Safety. Following several successful seminars, the RRDC committee – Mullen, John Fergus and Judy Stropus – decided to take the program to where the young drivers lived – online. Joining the enterprise in 2012, Davey brought his filmmaking skills and production values to bear to yield the encyclopedic storehouse of insider racing knowledge that is today’s SAVEisFAST.COM. With Jim Mullen’s guiding hand, it’s been Tom Davey’s gift to the industry.
SAFEisFAST.com is the culmination of a career that produced some 200 motorsports TV programs, including the ESPN “Secrets of Speed” series and Fox Sports international weekly motorsports program “V-Max”. A sampling of Davey’s films is viewable on his Facebook page.
He was a five-time SCCA National Champion – winning twice in open-wheel cars and three times in GT machines. Davey also finished second in Formula Ford and third in S-2000 at the SCCA runoffs. He won the North American Pro Formula Ford Championship, was runner-up in the World Super Vee Championship, finished third in the Pro Super Vee Championship Series and third in the World Formula Vee Championship. An occasional endurance driver, he scored GT class victories at Sebring and Watkins Glen and participated three times in the Baja 1000.
Davey could be grumpy, whimsical, was definitely opinionated, often acerbic with a biting wit. He nonetheless was mostly spot on, and that showed up in his creative output. And speaking of whimsy, how many of you still have “The Amazing Shiftomatic” sitting on a bookshelf?
