FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME

A Competitor. A Churchgoer. And a National Champion…Again.

By JW Martin

Philip Morris is going back for seconds.

Two years removed from his first national championship, Morris entered 2008 hungry for another title. Now, after a record-setting season, the driver of the number 26 Clarence’s Steakhouse Chevrolet is heading back to the WHELEN-All American Series banquet in Las Vegas as the champion.

Sanctioned by NASCAR, the WHELEN-All American Series represents grass-roots racing across the United States. The series is a conglomerate of both dirt and asphalt racers who participate weekly at local tracks across the nation.

For the past three seasons, no driver has been hotter on their respective home track than Morris, who competes at Motor Mile Speedway, a tight .416-mile bull-ring nestled in the New River Valley of Southwest Virginia.

In 2006, backed by a 10-win season at the Radford, Va., oval, Morris won his first national championship – then known as the Dodge Weekly Series – after edging out Nebraska racer Joe Kosiski by two points. After another 10-win season produced a third place effort in the national standings in 2007, Morris rallied to record the best season of his career in 2008, posting 13 wins at MMS alone, a single-season record. This time, Morris bested Iowa native Brian Harris, 955 to 953 in the national standings.

With the title, Morris becomes only the second driver in the history of the series to win the championship more than once. Larry Phillips of Springfield, Mo., holds the record with five.

“Over decades, this is what you strive for. And when you actually get it, it makes your hair stand up,” Morris explains. “This makes everything worthwhile.”

Morris is a mirror of the racers of yesteryear. A throwback to tradition, he is a family-man first, a husband and father of three. He is a small-business owner, who used his earnings to finance the car that won his first national title. Most of all, Morris is a fan of the sport that has seeped into every facet of his life.

And although some things have changed since his first championship, the two titles are surprisingly similar.

The Secret Behind the Success

Times are tense in the moments preceding the final points race of the 2008 season at Motor Mile Speedway. Competitors scamper to their respective cars in the organized chaos that ensues along pit road. As drivers climb into their machines, Philip Morris kneels alongside his, resting his head on his forearms.

Every competitor has a pre-race ritual that helps ready them for the laps to come. Some drivers listen to music. Others seek solitude.

Morris prepares through prayer.

“I pray specifically that He will give me the strength He gave King David, that He will give me the wisdom He gave Solomon, and that He will go before me like He did Moses,” Morris says.

Morris’ pre-race practice has become routine. And while this was not a regular race, Morris had prayed like this before, because he had been in the same position before.

The date was September, 23, 2006. One win away from his first national title, Morris entered the final race of the season at Motor Mile Speedway backed by ten victories and optimistic about the one he needed most. The race marked the culmination of a successful season, but it would be marred by the climax of a strained rivalry.

The finale became a fiasco when, on lap 22, a disgruntled competitor deliberately clipped Morris’ Chevrolet in the right-rear quarter panel. The wreck would end the team’s chance at victory and thwart their championship hopes.

Temporarily.

“It was such a haphazard thing. I still don’t know how we won the national championship [in 2006], because the odds were stacked against us way worse than they were this year,” Morris recalls.

The outcome of the Motor Mile event sent Morris and the team trekking throughout the southeast in search of one more shot at the title. One week later Morris found one last opportunity.

The team traveled to Asheboro, N.C., where Caraway Speedway was hosting a 100-lap Late Model feature on the final weekend of the series’ season. The scenario was simple: Win the race, win it all. Lose the race, lose it all.

Morris won that night at Caraway Speedway, despite the fact he had not one prior start to his credit at the track. The championship was his, by a margin of two points.

Two years later, Morris would be faced with the same ultimatum. He was back at his home track, and back in national title contention. And the scenario was simple:

Win the race, win it all. Lose the race, lose it all.

It was again the final race at Motor Mile Speedway, and it was Morris’ final chance to regain the points lead. And while his adversaries weren’t out to wreck him, they were out to beat him. And one driver almost did.

Morris was forced to fight back from a bump-and-run to complete the pass and retake the lead with less than ten laps to go in the 150 lap feature. In the fierce side-by-side racing that ensued, Morris eventually edged out his opponent at the finish. By virtue of the victory, Morris managed to surpass Brian Harris in the national standings by a mere two points a day before the deadline.

Harris had planned to run two races that Sunday, but rain would douse his dreams of a title. The championship went to Morris, by a margin of two points.

Morris says there is a simple reason for his success over the past three years.

“It’s a big secret that I’ve told everybody. It’s prayer. If I could put something on this car in big enough letters it’d be prayer.”

A Cause for Celebration

Morris was attending a church picnic in his hometown of Ruckersville, Va., that Sunday when he got a phone call informing him that he was the unofficial 2008 champion of the WHELEN-All American series.

“I wasn’t getting real good cellular service,” Morris recalls. “Finally, I got a call from Jason Christley from NASCAR, and he told me that [Harris had] rained out.”

Morris was finally able to relax, and he and the congregation began to celebrate.

Morris attends Mountain View Chapel, a church that he recently helped create. Coincidentally, the church was commemorating its first year anniversary on the same day Morris got word that he was the national champion.

Morris is in the driver’s seat on Saturday night, and he’s in the pew on Sunday morning. His relationship with religion goes as far back as his relationship with racing.

Morris has been saturated with the sport since his youth. He traces the origins of his obsession back to Sunday afternoons when his family would gather around the radio to listen to the race.

“My Dad would be screaming and hollering,” Morris recalls. “My whole family was into racing.”

Both his grandfather and his father raced. When their careers ended, the pair of racers prohibited the soon-to-be third generation driver from getting behind the wheel.

“I actually got kicked out of the house for a couple of weeks while I began my racing career,” Morris says.

The career began in 1986, while Morris was attending Longwood College in Virginia. He graduated with a degree in physics, knowledge that he applied to build his dirt cars. In 1992, Morris acquired his first asphalt Late Model. He continued to build his own cars, but at the onset of that initial season, he also sponsored them. Morris used funds from Trailer Town USA, his own small-business, to help offset the costs needed to compete.

Morris largely financed his own racing ventures until the end of the 2006 season. With the advent of his first title opportunities arose, and he opted to drive for Clarence Pickurel, who owns the number 26 Clarence’s Steakhouse Chevrolet.

While the colors on Morris’ Chevrolet changed, he was able to keep his own cars, and more importantly his own crew in the transition.

“A good number of my guys have been racing with me since I’ve been running dirt. We’ve been together for a long time, and that gives us a clear advantage when it comes to communication and working together, because it’s harder now,” Morris explains.

Compatible Competition

Just how tough is a Saturday night shootout at a short track like Motor Mile Speedway?

Although Morris doesn’t race against Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Mark Martin, he races against cars that come out of the same stable as the Nationwide Series rides that Martin and other notable wheelmen compete in.

The WHELEN All American series serves as a development division for many high profile teams, including JR Motorsports. Former cup drivers like Robert Pressley also support Late Model teams that compete at the national level.

So even at the bottom of the NASCAR hierarchy, the competition is keen.

But in order to win a national title, Morris not only had to battle the big names in the racing business, but another form of racing altogether.

Like the 2006 runner-up Joe Kosiski, Brian Harris, of Davenport, Iowa, races on a much more soiled surface.

Clay.

Unique to the WHELEN All-American series, the NASCAR sanctioned division categorizes both dirt Late Models and asphalt Late Model Stock Cars under one umbrella. Dirt racers like Kosiski and Harris operate under the same system and earn the same points as does pavement participants like Morris, although dirt races are much shorter. Average dirt events are comprised of just 35 laps, compared to a typical 150 lap asphalt feature.

“I so wish that my dirt track had been a NASCAR track. It’s so much easier. I think if you take a look at it, these cars are the true WHELEN All-American series cars. The blood, sweat and tears and the sacrifice that goes into it is so much greater, and I’ve been on both sides,” Morris says.

In a 20-plus year career that totals nearly 200 feature wins -including 65 dirt track trophies- Morris has amassed a substantial racing resume. He has 9 track titles at speedways such as South Boston and Motor Mile, where he currently holds the record for overall track championships (six) and consecutive championships (four). His career includes a stint in the Busch series, where in his debut at North Carolina Speedway in 1998 he finished fifth. He is also a previous winner of the prestigious 300 lap Late Model race at Martinsville Speedway.

Despite the record, Morris remains modest. He is a man respected for his character and defined by his faith. Throughout the course of his career he’s remained steadfast in his core convictions while offers and opportunities have come and gone. Some he took advantage of, others he turned down.

As an example worthy of mention, Morris remembers a discussion he had with car owner Richard Childress.

“When I was 38 or 39, I made a statement that I wouldn’t drive a car no matter who called me. The next week, Richard Childress called me. I had made the statement in front of somebody I respect, and so I had to live up to my words,” Morris recalls.

At the age of 43, Morris, although doubtful of a return into the upper ranks of racing, maintains a neutral position on future prospects.

“I’m not gonna say I’m not going to [move up], but this fits my lifestyle; the orange and white no. 26. This is my crew, my family,” Morris states.

I’ve been around guys who are famous and fortunate, and I think I’ve got it better.”

Satisfied with his success, Morris will sit at the head table in Las Vegas on November 7 with his dreams of a return trip realized. In many ways, his second coronation at the WHELEN All-American series banquet will be very fulfilling.