From Track Reports

South Boston, VA(March 9, 2012) — With the car count and last years track champion stealing the headlines for most of the day with his absence, Nick Smith emerged with the pole for the biggest race of the season at South Boston Speedway.

Smith in his return as driver for Bob Unczer’s ride after parting ways with the team last year was strong in practice and when it came time to qualify, he hit his marks laying down a lap of 15.744.  That time bested recently reinstated former NASCAR Whelen All-American Series champion, Peyton Sellers, who ended up second with a lap of 15.782.  Frank Deiny, Jr. qualified third with CE Falk III fourth and Dennis Holdren rounding out the top five qualifiers.

Motor Mile Speedway regular, Kris Bowen was sixth followed by Bruce Anderson, Eddie Johnson, Matt Bowling and Greg Edwards rounding out the top ten in the shorter than expected 18-car field.  The car count was initially the talk of the town as 40 or more entries were expected for this the first leg of the newly announced, Virginia Triple Crown Series, but after people took notice of the car count, they quickly noticed a familiar face wasn’t in the crowd.

That was the face …. well the face of Late Model Stock Car racing for the last decade or more, the one and only Philip Morris.  Dubbed the “King of Late Model Stock Car racing”, Morris has been a mainstay in the series for a long time and has four NASCAR National Championships to back it up including one as recent as last year.  The defending South Boston Speedway champion’s absence was like a shot heard ’round the world as Facebook, twitter and messageboards all over were lit up with the talk of him not being there.

Damien Sordelett of the Danville Register & Bee, a local paper in Danville, VA first reported Morris’ absence and later caught up with Morris’ team owner from last season, Jim Dean of Dean Motorsports.  Dean issued a statement to him about the situation.

“A couple of developmental deals didn’t come through that we were expecting to help fund the financial side of Philip’s deal for him to run. We’re expecting for hopefully some sponsorship to come in at a later date. He’ll be back in a car,” Dean said.

“It’s nothing to do with me and Philip. It’s just a responsibility that Dean Motorsports has to these other developmental teams that we have to make sure the funding is there for them and what they’ve invested. Mutually, we’ve decided that we’re going to put Philip’s deal on hold until we get the funding through sponsorship.”

You can read the full story on Sordelett’s blog at http://dsordelettregisterbee.blogspot.com/ and of course RACE22.com will have more on what looks to be a developing story with the biggest name in Late Model Stock Car racing.

The NASCAR Whelen Late Model 300 presented by Danville Toyota is set to roll off tomorrow, Saturday, March 10th at 2:00pm and if you can’t make it to the track be sure to check out the RACE22.com Twitter feed either on the home page of the website or at http://www.twitter.com/race22 or @race22.  We will have flag to flag coverage with text updates and photos of the biggest race of the season for South Boston Speedway.