Celebrating 20 years
Larry Phillips didn’t know what he was getting himself into exactly twenty Septembers ago.
It feels like it was a different lifetime ago when Larry won his first NASCAR Whelen All-American Series (then known as the NASCAR Winston Racing Series) national championship.
Larry switched gears in his racing career in 1989. After 30 years of dirt Late Model racing, he switched to full-time pavement short track racing. A couple of his local tracks Lebanon (Mo.) I-44 Speedway and Bolivar (Mo.) Speedway USA opened as paved tracks in 1989 and signed up with NASCAR to be part of the sanctioning body’s national championship program for weekly short tracks.
The big money in the series point fund is what got Larry’s attention. His first of five national titles was worth $62,000. During his 13-year run in the series, he won five NASCAR national championships, $503,700 in point fund awards, and compiled an amazing record of 226 wins in 308 starts.
But back in 1989, Larry was trying to figure out how NASCAR’s program worked and what he had to do to win the money.
I didn’t figure this out until recent years, but Larry was kind of a Clint Eastwood character to me. Eastwood’s movie roles have typically been that of a tough, fearless man of few words with a hidden heart of gold. And ol’ Larry rarely let his guard down.
Larry was exactly the kind of guy that NASCAR weekly racing was made for. He had a legion of fans and a winning reputation. He was a dirt-track racing legend in Missouri and Arkansas and few surrounding states. I first saw him race in one of the early 80′s Dirt Track World Championship events in Pennsboro, W.V., in one of his journeys back East. Even then there was a buzz among the crowd whenever he attended an event.
Larry’s venture into NASCAR racing and his success in it, brought the long-due national recognition he richly deserved… not that he enjoyed the fuss. At first, he didn’t care much for all the ceremony and golf games and dinners, but it was worth tolerating for the big bucks. But as the years went on, and his national championship total grew to an unprecedented five, he started to enjoy the acclaim heaped on him.
From one of my first interviews with Larry, here’s what he was thinking:
“We’ve probably won 600 features and almost every major event there is to win in this part of the country, and the most attention we’ve ever gotten is a two-inch story in the newspaper.
“It is great to have an opportunity to race for something like this,” he said of his first national championship. “I’ve never chased points or run for a major championship like this in my life.”
So twenty years ago, Larry Phillips broke through to become nationally recognized and celebrated by NASCAR as its champion. His 1989 racing record was 23 wins in 27 starts, and he began his ascension to that of a legend. He wrote his own chapters. Those of us who were fortunate enough to watch him race were lucky to watch him create history, too.