Rance Phillips, pictured with his daughter Lynn and his son Randy in victory lane in the late '70s.

By Mike Bell
Posted in Feature Stories 10/23/09

Some of the greatest Georgia drivers started later than others and are still racing.

Even though Rance Phillips started out drag racing in Florida, when he moved back to Waycross, Georgia, and went to work for Walker Chevrolet, he and his buddies decided to build a car to run at the local oval.

Rance remembers it this way:

“There were five of us at the Chevrolet dealer in 1963 (that) decided we would build a race car. We had gone to the Waycross Speedway, and it kind of enthused us so we decided to build one.

“We built us a car – limited – we had different drivers that was supposed to have been good drivers. Well, They kept the car tore up – tore up- tore up. The car sat up about six months – maybe a year.

“In the middle of ’64, we decided to get the ole’ car back out. We fixed it all back up. It had been rolled. We had gotten tired of working on it, but we were partners. I said I would drive the car so that way we won’t have to work on it every week.

“The first week that we ran it, I ran second. I enjoyed it. Next week was a 75-lap championship race and I won it. And there was an enormous amount of racecars there. After that it got to where every time they opened a race track somewhere, I had to be there.”