Story by: Langley Austin ~ [email protected]
Ruckersville, VA(March 15, 2012) — As the dawn of a new season emerged at South Boston Speedway, it brought along with it a special set of drama not previously known in the Late Model Stock Car racing arena.
As the pit area began to flutter with activity and the cars began to unload from their trailers, the crews all greeted one another and got ready to do battle for the first time this season, a familiar car and familiar driver was absent. It wasn’t just any driver, it wasn’t just any car and it wasn’t about to go unnoticed by the people in the pit area and it was about to set off a firestorm.
A lot of drivers weren’t there in fact … only 18 cars had made the trek to South Boston, VA for what was to be the tracks biggest race of the season, paying $10,000 to win. While on any given week, the car count would have dominated the talk and the headlines, people had only barely noticed. Rarely does a drivers absence create much of a stir and this instance would be the equivalence of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. just out of the blue not showing up at Bristol this weekend.
The stir created by Philip Morris’ absence will likely never be duplicated … the pit area transformed from a bunch of race car mechanics and drivers to a high school full of teenage girls. The rumors ran rampant, nothing went untouched from Morris and Dean splitting up and Morris racing for one of his enemies to Morris losing sponsor Clarence’s Steakhouse and so much more. As always is the case with rumors 90% of it was true, but with few comments from Jim Dean and none from the absent, Philip Morris, the gossip couldn’t be controlled.
The most often bantered rumor or maybe opinion was that Dean had pulled the rug out from underneath Morris and given his ride and his car to his new drivers, Darrell Gilchrist and Matt Bowling. And, when Morris’ voice was finally heard on the whole situation, that’s where he started.
“Public opinion is that he had taken my sponsor, my ride and put someone else in it,” said Morris. “It’s just not true. That’s not how it all happened and that’s not the case at all.”
Morris admitted that he was disappointed in the way things had went and that he wasn’t in a car, but that he has no ill feelings toward Dean.
“I didn’t understand the talk and Jim(Dean) getting bashed by everyone. He’s supported me, he has done more for me than anyone else. He helped out a guy who really loves racing.”
“He had committed to the doing this season based on funding coming from partially from some other development deals, but they fell through. Taylor Doggett was going to run for him this season and another driver was working on a deal and we were going to run off some of the funds from that, but they both fell through.”
Morris said that he had indications that this could happen for several weeks prior to the Danville Toyota 300 at South Boston Speedway, but that reality didn’t set in until the plug was pulled on Doggett’s ride on Wednesday.
“Thursday, we found out for sure that we wouldn’t be able to run last weekend,” continued Morris. “We knew that a couple of things had to go our way for us to be able to be fully funded this season without more sponsorship. What we were hoping to have come through fell apart due to sponsorship on the other drivers part and that affected my ride.”
By that time according to Morris, Dean had already spent money into new equipment for the other drivers and without a return on that investment simply didn’t have the funding to allow Morris to ride all season. Morris said that they had tested Tuesday of last week and that the car was perfect and that if things hadn’t gone south that the equipment was in place.
Clarence’s Steakhouse is the most well-known sponsor in Late Model Stock Car racing and teaming with Morris has certainly continued to keep the name out there and in victory lane. Morris also addressed the issue of his sponsor to hopefully end all the rumors surrounding them adorning the car that Gilchrist drove in the race on Saturday.
“Clarence’s Steakhouse still fully supports us and they are also on Darrell Gilchrist’s car as a bonus for all they’ve done for us,” added Morris. “Clarence’s has been the best sponsor that a person could ask for and they’re sticking behind me all the way while we work through this.”
“I hate it for {Clarence’s Steakhouse}, they are my biggest supporter and they put up their fair share of money, but there’s a deficit there, because today expenses are two or three times what they used to be and we just need to get additional funding to make it to the track.”
Morris also got the chance to dispel some other rumors that pitted him with drivers that have been known to be his nemesis’ on the track in his career.
“Me and Lee haven’t spoke about this past weekend, we’ve spoke several times since the incident at the end of last season and we’re good,” said Morris. “I wouldn’t put it past us to help each other out, but we haven’t had a discussion about it.”
Morris was also rumored to possibly be entering a car out of the FDJ Motorsports stables and while he didn’t rule it out, he did admit that there hasn’t been a conversation between them about it.
“Everyone thinks that me and Frank(Deiny) are bitter rivals, but that’s not true and I’m sure any piece that he would put me in would be top notch, but we’ve both got our own deals and own priorities and I don’t see us racing together.”
Morris didn’t shy away from any topic and when asked about his phone ringing a lot since news came out Friday, he admitted he’d had a lot of offers.
“Certainly I’ve had a lot of offers,” added Morris. “The interest in me is flattering and I really appreciate it, I’ve had a lot of offers from a lot of people that I didn’t know were interested.”
While Morris was appreciative of all the calls and offers, he says he’s committed to working with Dean Motorsports until that option isn’t available to him.
“I don’t want to give up on this deal with Jim, he’s been my friend and my supporter and I want to continue to drive for him. We have everything in place, we just need the funding to go to the track and race week in and week out. We might not be able to do a full year deal and we might not be able to go for a track championship or the [NASCAR] National title, but we can still race for wins when additional funding can be found.”
Morris says that he and Dean are still friends and still talk all the time.
“Nothing’s changed, we’re still friends. We’ve been burning up the phone brainstorming trying to come up with a way to go racing as soon as possible. But, to run the deal first class is the only way we know how to do it and to do that we’re going to need some help, so I’m calling on anyone who can help us to get to the track to get in touch with us.”
Morris feels that due to the exposure and attention that having to park the car for South Boston’s biggest race of the season has caused may help with their sponsorship efforts.
“It’s got the attention of people, so it didn’t hurt from that aspect. However, we need to be on the track and racing for wins to show sponsors what we’re capable of.”
Many fans have wondered how can the guy who wins the NASCAR National title for the Whelen All-American Series, the South Boston Speedway champion, a winner of 19 of 22 races at South Boston not be able to fund the team this season. Many think that the money that they won last season should have been able to carry Morris into this season, but Morris says that’s not the case.
“The purse money and the NASCAR money certainly helps, but the National title doesn’t pay what it used to back when Jim won it with Mark McFarland it paid $200,000 and now it’s down to around $40,000. It costs us a lot to run the team like we do with testing and tires and all, people just don’t see all the expenses.”
“You have to have a balanced budget,” added Morris. “We still might be able to get the funding to go the rest of the year, but right now we’re not in a position to continue on.”
And, while Morris said he was committed to Dean, he did leave the door open to do something else if this didn’t work out.
“There’s always people interested in doing a deal and right now my allegiance is with Jim Dean, Dean Motorsports and Clarence’s Steakhouse. We could possibly end up just running part time with Jim, but I don’t want to sit on the sidelines all season either.”
Morris said that he appreciated all the support from fans and that he wishes that the economy was different, but like everyone else he’s just along for the ride.
“We were set to try and repeat this season, we were working hard to get ahead of the other guys like CE Falk and Frank Deiny. We didn’t overlook racers, we overlooked the economy and no one can predict what’s going to happen there.”
Morris also answered one more rumor and that was involving the details of his deal with Dean as rumors floated around South Boston last weekend that Morris failed to come up with his half of the expenses to race.
“Jim is the car owner, he took care of everything last year. People might have thought that I was paying some of the expenses because it came out of my checkbook, but Jim was funding it all. This is his team, not mine.”
Morris also added that in years past he did pay half the expenses, but that last season Jim Dean took care of everything.
Morris doesn’t seem to be done racing Late Model Stock Cars and said that he’s not interested in racing anything else, but his days with Dean Motorsports may be numbered due to sponsorship. There’s no doubt that Morris will be behind the wheel of a car this season and probably soon, but what is in doubt is who’s car he’ll be driving.
Morris’ car owner, Jim Dean also gave us his side of the story and while much of what they had each had to say was similar, some things didn’t match up as well. We’ll have Dean’s side of the story in Part Two of this three-part article exclusively on RACE22.com.
Click Here to Read Part 2 featuring Jim Dean’s side of the story.
