THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506220639
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANK VEHORN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
Phil Warren should have been worried. A racing season that had begun so well for the Late Model Stock driver from Norfolk was starting to wobble.
After victories in each of the first eight weeks at Langley Speedway, , he had lost three of the previous four events, had torn the front end off his race car the week before, and clearly needed to brake the skid and begin a fresh run of momentum.
The pressure was on.
But was he a worried man?
Hardly. On this warm Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before cranking the engine in his yellow No. 47 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and starting a new winning streak, he was relaxing in the shade of his car hauler, a cola in one hand, a bag of spicy potato chips in the other, and a boyish smile on his unwrinkled, 37-year-old face.
Nothing seems to faze Warren. No one ever sees him sweat.
``We have been married 17 years,'' said his wife, Barbara, ``and he's been upset with me only twice.''
Thus, she was not surprised by Warren's emotionless reaction to having his eight-week winning streak at Langley end on May 27 when Eddie Johnson beat him across the finish line by a car length.
``He was the same as he had been the previous eight weeks when he won,'' she said. ``He's always calm.''
He is the same in the midst of what could become the greatest season a driver has ever had at Langley, as he was in 1992, when he didn't win a race.
That's just the way Warren is, said Dave Willis, who has balanced a Navy career with being Warren's crew chief the last 10 years.
``Phil never changes,'' Willis said. ``He's calm, cool and collected all the time. He has raced long enough to know you are going to have ups and downs. He knows he could get beat every night, or that he could take the car home in pieces.
``We've done that, back in 1990 or '91. We had a brand new Lumina. Thirty-five laps later, it was destroyed. Took it home in pieces.''
Two years ago, Warren's career was in the pits after going through one season and part of another without a victory. It hurt, but Warren kept that smile on his face.
``Maybe you run into years when you are just not supposed to win,'' he theorized. ``I tried not to get the big head during the good years because I've seen too many times when things can turn on you.''
Warren won Late Model championships at Langley in 1986 and '88. He added a third title last year.
``We didn't know what to expect this year,'' Barbara Warren said. ``It seems if you win one year, the next year is not as good.''
No one has won back-to-back Late Model titles at Langley since Elton Sawyer, who currently competes in Grand National and Winston Cup events, three-peated from 1983 through 1985. But no one has bolted out to the kind of season Warren is having since Sawyer's years of domination, either.
Last Saturday, Warren came back from his mini-run of misfortune to win his 10th race of the season at Langley. He's finished second three times and third once, and has a 135-point lead in the series standings.
If Warren remains as strong in the second half of the season, he will contend for NASCAR's Mid-Atlantic championship and possibly the national title, both of which are determined by a driver's best 20 finishes.
``We are looking at the regional title pretty heavy and thinking we have a real good chance at this point,'' Warren said. ``This already is the best season I've ever had.''
The chariot carrying Warren to a golden year is a brand new 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the same sleek model that is ruling the tracks in Winston Cup racing.
Warren built the new racer during the winter, but there wasn't any reason to be excited when it was rolled out for its debut at Martinsville, Va., in March.
``The way it performed, we actually thought it was going to sit in the garage and collect dust all summer,'' Willis said.
A week later, when Langley opened its season, Warren left the Monte Carlo home and took the Pontiac he had driven to the championship in 1994. He won the opener, but decided to give the new Monte Carlo another chance.
``We brought it over for a practice test . . . and it actually felt better than the Pontiac did. It was faster on used tires than the Pontiac had qualified on new tires,'' Warren said. He decided to see what it would do in the race, and the rest is history.
Warren's Monte Carlo is the only one of its kind at Langley, but none of his competitors believe it is the reason for his dominance.
``It is not the car, and he's not cheating - at least, no more than anyone else,'' says Roger Sawyer, a former champion who is now crew chief for Ashton Lewis Jr. ``A lot of it is that Phil has raced here so long and knows very inch of this track.
Sawyer said another advantage for Warren is that his team has been together for a long time.
``They know what he wants in a car and gives it to him,'' he said.
In addition to Willis, other crewmen are Bruce Brierly, Doug Warren, Donald McElhenie, Walter McLaughlin, Ralph McDaniel, Chris Card and Warren's son, Anthony.
``Phil has run well all 10 years I have been with him,'' says Willis, ``but a few years we were just getting out-dollared. We didn't have the money to buy new parts or keep the motors fresh.''
That changed with help from sponsors such as Charlie Falk Auto, Wards Corner Amoco and Norfolk Paint.
``If we want to try a $150 shock, we buy it and try it. If it doesn't work, we can throw it on the truck and feel we are not wasting anything. Eventually it will work somewhere, you know. Before, we couldn't afford to buy something just to try it,'' Willis said.
Through most of his career, Warren has had to race on a tight budget. He works in his uncle's garage during the week, and it wasn't too long ago that he worked on other people's cars at night to have enough money to buy tires and fuel for his race car.
``Phil has had to work hard for everything he has, '' Langley promoter Wayne Wyatt said. ``That is one reason no one has complained about him winning so often this season.''
Another reason is Warren does not wear his victories on his sleeve, and he has the respect of other drivers because of his clean style of driving.
He and Bugs Hairfield raced side-by-side down the stretch last Saturday, bumping only once when Hairfield's car got loose and slid up into Warren's.
``He (Warren) races you hard but clean,'' Hairfield said. ``If I had caused him to wreck, I probably would have parked my car because I would have felt so bad about it.''
When some drivers say Warren has ``no style'' because he races so cleanly, he takes it as a compliment.
``I guess that is good, really,'' Warren said. ``I can race most of the guys close and not have any trouble. There are times I have to do a little pushing to pass someone, and I might have to mess him up a little bit by bumping on him to get by. But I am not going to take someone out to win a race.''
It is the competition more than the victories that has kept Warren coming back to Langley on Saturday nights with a smile on his face, even in the down years.
``I have been on top, and I have been down so far I couldn't do anything right,'' Warren said. ``Sometimes when you are running bad, you got to love it to keep coming back, trying to beat that guy you have been trying to beat for 20 races and can't beat him.''
This year Warren is that guy out front. But you can't tell it by the smile on his face. It was there when he was the guy trying to catch up, too. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Martin Smith-Rodden, Staff
Winston Cup star Jeff Gordon will join Phil Warren (above) and other
local drivers for an autograph session...
by CNB