Where is ... Phil Parsons?

Phil Parsons is as busy today as he ever was as a driver, if not moreso.

Parsons, like older brother Benny, turned to broadcasting once his driving days came to an end. Parsons now works as a broadcaster on SPEED's coverage of Craftsman Truck Series and ARCA events. He also appears on DirecTV's NASCAR Hot Pass. From the time Parsons left for Daytona this year for the ARCA season opener through Thanksgiving, he'll have been home -- get this -- a total of three weekends.

Phil Parsons

Career Statistics

	Cup	Busch
Starts	202	285
Wins	1	2
Top-5	10	38
Top-10	40	96
Poles	0	6
Laps Led	174	161
Avg. Start	21.2	21.0
Avg. Finish	20.1	17.7

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What's more, Parsons and his wife of 23 years, Marcia, have a 19-year-old daughter, Kinsley, who is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and 9-year-old twins, Cami and Stefan. A kid in college and two in elementary school? Parsons has one that knows everything and two that are into everything.

"I was right dead in the middle of my racing career when [Kinsley] came along, so she never knew anything but to travel," Parsons said. "She traveled from the time she was four or five weeks old until basically I stopped driving. When the twins came along, people ask if they're double the work. It's more than that. It's exponential."

As with so many racing families, much of the day-to-day responsibilities of the family fall on Marcia to "pick up the slack when I'm gone," Parsons says. He'll help out when and where he can when he's home. He has few office duties during the early part of the week, maybe a conference call here or there, but on the weekends, it's pretty much all Marcia, all the time.

Still, Parsons has no plans to cut back.

"As long as I'm fortunate enough that the people from SPEED and the people from DirecTV would like to have me, I would sure like to be there," Parsons said.

Parsons ran a total of 202 Cup races between 1983 and 1997, with a win at Talladega in 1988. In the Busch Series, he made 285 starts between 1982 and 2001. Parsons won the third race in the history of what's now known as the Busch Series, at Bristol. He would not win again on the circuit for another 12 years.

It was at Charlotte that Parsons collected that second Busch Series victory, and it couldn't have come at a better time in his career. His run in the Cup division was all but over, and his prospects in the Busch Series weren't much better. His team had one full-time employee and a patchwork conglomeration of small sponsors.

For all that, however, it's still hard for Parsons to say which win was bigger -- in Cup at Talladega, or the Rocky Balboa-esque run to Victory Lane at Charlotte in the Busch Series.

"I'm asked that a lot, and it's really hard to say," Parsons said. "At the time, I didn't think that one at Charlotte was as big a deal as I think, reflecting back on it now, that it was. To say that we raced on a shoestring would be an understatement. I had one full-time person and a bunch of guys that helped on nights and the weekends. We only ran sporadically. We didn't have sponsorship to run more than a handful of races.

"I thought that was what we were supposed to do. I thought we were supposed to be competitive every time we got to the racetrack. We certainly didn't win as much as we would've liked, but we were very competitive. I didn't think it was that big a deal at the time ... but it's awfully hard to choose whether that Cup win at Talladega or that Busch win at Charlotte was the biggest."

Parsons' last year or so as a driver was a frustrating one. He wasn't running as well as he would've liked to, and he didn't see the chance that things were going to get any better any time soon. He left his last full-time ride at the end of the 2000 season, and he ran just one more race, at Kentucky the following season.

There was a time that he truly missed not being in the driver's seat. Now, though, being around the sport as a television personality is enough to satisfy the competitor in him.

"When I first stepped out of the car, it was a little bit tougher," Parsons admitted. "It's been, gosh, seven years since I raced full time and I ran one race in 2001. It's gotten easier as the time has gone on. I feel as though I probably could step back in a car and be competitive, but it's not something I dwell on."

Parsons is asked if there's ever a time when he's glad he's not out there on the track, even on the most miserable of days. Quite simply, he responds, "No."

Then again, "No."

"We make fun of the pit reporters sometimes when it's really cool in the booth and it's really hot on pit road, but, no, never for a second [is he glad he's not driving]," Parsons said. "I loved it. I wanted to do that from the time I was 5 years old. It never felt like a job. Of course, TV doesn't either, truthfully. I love doing it. Marcia tells me now that I'm on a paid vacation every weekend."