Commentary by: Langley Austin ~ [email protected]

Salisbury, NC(December 17, 2010) — When the 2010 season ended there were many things that stuck out in my mind as the things that we’ll take from a very interesting year of racing. So, here’s the first of what I hope will be a series of articles that give you a perspective of the 2010 season and the players who made it one heck of a season.

We’ll start at the top with the what might be the greatest Late Model Stock Car driver in history … Philip Morris and his reign as the division King …….

When the 2009 season was completed, Philip Morris didn’t look like the invincible, super hero type driver that he had appeared to be over the previous seasons. With that, we instantly began talking about the fact that this might be the end of an era at his home track, Motor Mile Speedway and the beginning of the end of his career.

Boy …. were we wrong. Philip came right back out this season and again asserted himself as the driver to beat at Motor Mile. He quickly grabbed the first two wins of the season on the 4/10 mile track that he’s owned for the last decade or so and he looked to be well on his way to another championship(at this point we’ve stopped counting how many). However the next race out as he

carried extra weight due to the tracks rules to handicap a driver who wins two races in a row, Philip found that he couldn’t beat the competition and the track.

That night he lost both legs of a twin bill and was even crashed in the second feature of the night. This would be the beginning of the end of his dominance at Motor Mile Speedway, but not because he wasn’t still the driver to beat, but because he was about to boycott the speedway where he had made his name. He returned the following two weeks and went to victory lane both times, but when after attempting to get the track to remove the handicapping rule didn’t work he decided to sit out the next race.

Many thought that he would just return and play by the rules in the sandbox he loved, but when the gates opened and practice began, he was no where to be found. Then by what many thought was fate, the race was rained out and was rescheduled for the following week, leaving many to think that Philip would return and things would be normal again. Philip was again absent and the twin races set for that night would go off without him in the field, thus eliminating him from the championship.

From there everything was less dramatic as he returned a few weeks later and returned to victory lane and the season came to a close with someone else winning the championship for the first time since 2004. Morris won a total of six races at Motor Mile this season and just one more at South Boston during the regular season, which was even less than the number of wins he had accumulated in 2009, when we began thinking his career was on a downhill slide.

However, when it came time for “Big Race Season”, Philip once again proved himself to be the man as he first won the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 300 at Martinsville Speedway in dominating fashion withstanding challenges from the biggest names in the business. It was his second win in Late Model Stock Car racings marquee event and easily the biggest of his career. He then backed that win up two weeks later with the victory in the Danville Toyota 300, South Boston Speedway’s biggest race annually.

So, despite not winning the Motor Mile Speedway championship for the first time in six years and never being in contention for his fourth NASCAR Whelen All-American Series National Championship, Philip Morris once again proved that he is the “King” of Late Model Stock Car racing. It may not have been the season that he envisioned when it started, but he’ll probably admit, it turned out maybe even better in the end with the two big wins to close the season.

While we might have thought that the end of a decade meant the end of the road for Philip, he proved us wrong and had one of the most successful seasons in his career, not for the number of wins, but for the races that he won. Now that his 2010 run is over, what lies next for the “King”? Will he return for another big season at Motor Mile? Will he have that fall off season that we were expecting in 2010?

We’ll find out when the 2011 season commences soon enough …