While the spotlight might not always be focused on Pro Stock racer Larry Morgan - 16 national event victories over 21 years as a full-time drag racer, #4 in point standings for the 2004 NHRA POWERade Series - the career efforts of this Newark, OH native are enough to illuminate a man who enjoys his work, his life - so much so that he will never quit, no matter what the odds are against him. Father, racer, fabricator, breaker of streaks; like all of us he's had a lifetime of ups and downs, but 2004 was a season that would tax even the most vigorous with its vacillations.

Coming out of the 2003 season, Morgan, with help from one-time friend Bob Glidden, had placed 11th in the standings, despite not qualifying in the first 11 races. By the next season he broke into the top ten at number 4, his first top-five finish since 1995. At the Atlanta event alone he succeeded not only in finishing the race as runner-up to Greg Anderson, but had broken the latter's 11-race top-qualifier streak when he came in at No.1.

Then came the Schumacher deal and the meltdown of a friendship.

With Don Schumacher shopping around for a Pro Stock team to purchase, Bob Glidden had proposed Morgan's team. An astute engine builder as well as a canny driver, Larry Morgan represented an excellent package deal - and was, even before his entrance into the NHRA Pro ranks back in 1987.

Having earned dual reputations as a driver (three Super Stock victories in 1984, four in Comp the following year) and researcher (he helped develop the 4-cylinder Iron Duke motor), Morgan was approached by Arlen Fadely, at that time the Drag Racing Manager for GM, to pilot Bob Panella's Pro Stock Olds and help develop their engine program.  

"I guess I had a reputation where I wasn't afraid to go after something," Morgan muses.

Finishing 15th in the standings his rookie year, he didn't really make his mark until 1989, two years later, when he recorded his first Pro Stock victory at the U.S. Nationals against Bob Glidden in the final. Glidden previously had an unbroken streak of four consecutive victories at Indianapolis, along with seven Wallys from the 13 events leading up to the U.S. Nationals.

"(Glidden) and I had been friends throughout my sportsman career," Morgan reports. "Like everybody else I looked up to him. He was my hero, so to speak." And they were tight; Morgan was the first person Glidden saw when he awoke following heart surgery; Morgan would later lend Glidden his car when the latter was attempting a comeback in 2002.  

Throughout this period Morgan continued to do R&D work with GM, helping to develop a lot of their racing parts program along with Warren Johnson. "We spent a lot of time at Caterpillar doing the blocks," Morgan explains. "It took a lot of ideas to move the GM program forward, and I'm pretty proud of my part in it."

His race record during this period was nothing to scoff at either. Finishing the 1989 season third in points, Morgan commenced a seven year reign in the top 10, before falling fallow for another seven years when he couldn't crack the top 10 with a sledgehammer. This partly explains his decision to switch from GM to Chrysler in 1999. "At that point I felt that we were at the end of the line with our GM cylinder head," says Morgan, "and there weren't a whole lot of people at GM concerned about racing like we were."

Meanwhile the people at Chrysler were quite concerned that they hadn't had an authentic Hemi-powered Pro Stock Mopar in the winner's circle since 1973, and were looking to create an engine program which could more aptly bear the Hemi name. While the 90's had seen a resurgence of Hemi-badged Mopars, these were actually wedge-headed competitors, virtually indistinguishable from their GM counterparts.

"Lou Patane (V.P. of Motorsports for Daimler-Chrysler, now retired) had brought me on board along with (fellow Pro Stock racer) David Nickens," Morgan explains, going on to say that the project he and Nickens were handed was like a clean slate. Based around a "twisted wedge" head design upon a more traditional Hemi block, the Hemi '99 is the foundation upon which Morgan has entered the 21st century of drag racing. With a contract from Chrysler, he supplies and runs the engine programs under a lease agreement for Pro Stock racers Kenny Koretsky and V. Gaines. While R&D is ongoing, the new motor is yielding pretty good results thus far: all three of these cars usually succeed in making the bump, while last year Koretsky scored 9th in points. In 2002, Morgan himself won at Sonoma, making his first trip to the winners circle since 1994. (On his driving abilities alone, Morgan also won the $30,000 "Motel 6 Who Got The Light?" Award that year, posting the smallest margin of victory during the season, .0002 seconds.)

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Morgan has a crew of eight who work on these Hemi engines, including Gary Pearman, so he's not overly taxed when it comes to tuning the other two rides during a race, but three is the absolute limit. "Our lease program is our primary business," he explains. "Qualifying three cars at a race is a pretty heavy feat. We could do more if we wanted to have just an engine shop, but I'm real happy with the ways things are going. If you didn't have (lease programs) like that, you'd only have a handful of racers out there, and I believe it takes more than one (race team) to make a program work. We're constantly changing parts, cylinder head designs, block designs; but without the money and people to run these parts I guess I'd be better off running Super Stock - and I'm not ready to do that."

For the 2003 season Bob Glidden came aboard to help, but by the middle of the 2004 season their relationship began to deteriorate. Says Morgan, "Glidden and Don Schumacher had a deal put together where they were going to buy my team. I thought at first it might be the right time in my life to sell my business and have less financial worries. But when it came down to the nickels and dimes of the deal, we couldn't come to a total agreement. After discussing the possible sale with the guys at the shop, I figured out where I stood in the program, and I felt that it was not only in my best interest, but also the best interest of the team, not to do it. I just couldn't work with Glidden. He is probably one of the best racers there ever was, but couldn't just sit down and have dinner with you
and enjoy life. Nothing against Don Schumacher, but I just felt it was better for me and my program to keep it intact."

Litigation ensued, and it cost Morgan $150,000 in legal fees to extradite him from the deal. After the dust settled, Glidden stayed with Schumacher to manage the Pro Stock teams that were eventually acquired, Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Richie Stevens, and would rather not comment on the previous season. Morgan still expresses respect for Glidden's talent, while Glidden will probably always remain grateful to Morgan for his friendship, but barring an act of Congress, reconciliation is out of the question.

In the plus column, Morgan was able to sign a new sponsor for 2005: zMax. Billed as a micro-lubricant, zMax is an oil additive, and the company will be introducing their own line of oil soon. Outside of the performance/drag racing market, Morgan explains that zMax is also promoting how it improves gas mileage in everyday driving - that's right, those increasingly important mpg's, because their current product also functions as a gas additive. "I didn't think that it could," marvels Morgan, "but then I put it in some of my own vehicles, and it did. Now I use it in everything I own. Everything." Fellow Mopar racer V. Gaines has also tested zMax in his commercial fleet of diesel delivery trucks, with the same results.   

Coming out of such a tumultuous year, what keeps Larry Morgan going when others would have thrown in the towel? "I've just always liked the competitive part of it, the challenge," he muses. "I sometimes sit back and wonder myself why I like drag racing so much. I love to fool with engines and pick up more power. I like the people, the fans, the racers. I guess that's why I do it: I still enjoy doing it. I'd have to say I was fairly successful... We didn't have the proper funding at different times, but we've been able to get by. It wasn't because we didn't try by any means - I don't surrender easily."

He keeps his goals simple: to win as many races as he can, and just be a real person. "There's not many of those out there in this sport," Morgan comments. "Believe me, when I roll up (to the starting line), I want to wear out who I'm running, regardless of who it is. I hate to get beat; on the outside I show that it doesn't bother me, but on the inside, it's killing me."

To his wife and partner, Diane, and sons Nick (born just before his U.S. Nationals win) and Austin, he's still husband and father, nervously but proudly eyeing the accomplishments of his offspring. "My oldest kid is doing something all the time," he chuckles, "a real worker. He's building everything: go-karts, dirt bikes, little choppers - he's 15 and a half and he's ready...he's got his learner's permit already."

While Larry Morgan looks forward to that day when his boys might join his race team (as long as they keep their grades up in school), it might serve us to look back at Larry's own yearbook. "When I graduated from high school," says Morgan, "they did a 'senior spotlight' on me, and I told them then that I wanted to become a professional drag racer."

Twelve years later that dream became reality. "I've been doing this for a living for over 20 years," says Morgan, "and I think there's but a handful of people in the business right now who can say that." How cool is that?   

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