Morris has been turning laps...
Morris has been turning laps in Late Model competition since 1993, but had his best season in 2006. Photo courtesy of Motor Mile Speedway
Philip Wayne Morris
Date of Birth: May 11, 1965
Hometown: Ruckersville, Virginia
Education: Majored in physics,Longwood College, Farmville, Virginia
Family: wife, Donna; daughter, Allison (age 12); son, Blake (age 9); son, Tye (5 months)
Hobbies/interests: Four-wheelers, horses, cars
Career Highlights2006 NASCAR Dodge Weekly Series National Champion and NASCAR Late Model Track Champion at Motor Mile Speedway
2005 NASCAR Late Model Track Champion at Motor Mile Speedway.
2003 NASCAR Late Model Track Champion at South Boston Speedway.
2001 NASCAR Dodge Weekly Series Blue Ridge Region Champion and NASCAR Late Model Track Champion at Motor Mile Speedway.
2000 Made five NASCAR Busch Series starts, driving for George Debidart; also won Taco Bell 300, a popular Late Model event at Martinsville Speedway.
1999 Made three NASCAR Busch Series starts at Las Vegas, Bristol, and South Boston, driving for car owner Michael Baldauf.
1998 Placed Second in NASCAR Late Model track championship at South Boston Speedway; made NASCAR Busch Series debut with Fifth-Place finish at Rockingham Speedway.
1997 NASCAR Late Model Track Champion at Motor Mile Speedway
1996 Placed Third in NASCAR Late Model track championship points at Motor Mile Speedway.
1995 NASCAR Late Model Rookie of the Year at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Virginia.
It's the day before the October Nextel Cup race at Lowe's Motor Speedway and Philip Morris, NASCAR's 2006 Dodge Weekly Series Champion, is in town at the behest of Jeremy Davidson, a young, energetic public relations whiz for the sanctioning body.
While awaiting breakfast at a Cracker Barrel restaurant near the speedway, Morris is engaged in casual conversation with Davidson and a journalist. But the chatter is not about engines or setups or racetracks, as you might expect from a national champion short track racer. It's about biscuits and gravy.
"I learned how to make biscuits from my grandma," says Morris. "When I was growing up and would spend the night with my grandparents, I woke up to the sound of pots and pans being pulled from the cabinets and the smell of biscuits and country food cooking."
Morris is from tiny Ruckersville, Virginia, about a five-hour drive from Charlotte, and he's as Southern fried as they come. In many ways, he's a throwback to several decades ago when stock car racing was defined by Southern men from small towns, men who raced simply because they loved the sport- not because of some romantic notion of escaping the rural South, as some racing historians would have you believe.
Yes, in an era when NASCAR is spreading its tentacles into Mexico and Canada, when the sport is moving rapidly from its roots and continually attempting to redefine itself, there are parts of the past that can't be ignored. Even as the sport's competitors and fan base seem to grow younger by the race, Morris is a 41-year-old national champion and racer who has been there, done that in oval track competition.
Morris looks much younger than his 41 years would suggest, though, and he wins races regularly and presents himself well in public-well enough to draw a few misguided comparisons.
"We'll have fans who will come up to me and say, 'You're going to be the next Jeff Gordon, just hang in there.' I'll tell them they don't know the whole story," says Morris.
Morris, while looking younger...
Morris, while looking younger than his 41 years, is not the typical NASCAR champion of today. Last year's Dodge Weekly Racing national champion, Peyton Sellers, was 21. Photo by Penny Holder
The whole story shows Morris with a long and impressive racing rsum, having won numerous track titles and Late Model races in his native Virginia. His 13 victories last season give him a career total of 172 feature wins, including 65 on dirt. And he even had a turn on the Busch Series circuit a few years ago. He's also college educated, clean-cut, happily married with three children, and he used everything he's learned in 20-plus years of racing to earn the title of 2006 National Champion in the NASCAR Dodge Weekly Series.
This is obviously not a case of a veteran crew chief guiding a youngster up the ladder. Morris, the veteran racer who started out in a Bomber class on a 3/8-mile dirt track near his home, calls his own shots and builds his cars from the rollcage up. He says he began building his cars when he raced on dirt because, as a physics major in college, he wanted to dissect and understand every piece of the car.
He also sees his background as a Southerner steeped in the graces of short track competition-his father and grandfather also raced in rural Virginia-as an asset that many young racers today lack.
"I think it gives me a competitive edge that most people in any other part of the business world do not have," says Morris. "My passion is right here and it came from when I was very, very young. It's something that we esteem very highly, and not just me but others like me who came from growing up around stock car racing. You can take that kind of passion and put it into a business-type forum and obviously you've got a much better chance of succeeding."
That passion and more than 20 years of experience all came into play during the title run, especially during the last week of the Weekly Racing Series season. Morris' home track is Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Virginia, a three-hour tow from his home, but the title was won at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, North Carolina, a 0.455-mile paved track Morris had never seen before arriving to race on the weekend of September 30.
"The exciting thing was, before the race at Caraway, Joe Kosiski from Omaha, Nebraska, was leading the national point standings by a slim margin over Philip," says Davidson. "So there was only one scenario-that he had to win that race at Caraway and there had to be at least 21 cars in the field for the bonus points. Philip and I talked on the phone that week before, and he knew that going in.
"He had to win, and Second Place wouldn't even have been good enough."
So Morris was in complete control of his fate, with no other racers able to knock him from the title if he won at Caraway, as Kosiski had already finished his season.