At age 62, Larry Morgan is feeling rejuvenated, thanks to recent back surgery.

However, the longtime NHRA Pro Stock driver, who sat out last season without sponsorship, has an extra spring in his step this winter. That’s because he’s preparing to enter the feisty J&A Service Pro Modified class – even though he has never sat in a Pro Mod car.

His team owner/race partner and sponsor won’t be announced until next week, but Morgan said in a telephone conversation from his home in Newark, Ohio, that the operation is based in California.

“The sponsorship isn’t done yet. We want to do it properly. I can’t say anything. But it’s a done deal. I am going to run, for sure. I’m going to do it for sure,” he said.

“I’m hooking up with a good guy who races,” Morgan said.

He said prominent Pro Mod team owner-driver Danny Rowe, of Laguna Hills, Calif., is not his new partner.

“It’s not Danny,” Morgan said, “but Danny offered me a ride in one of those a couple of years ago. And I probably should have taken it. I guess I wasn’t quite ready yet, wasn’t sure.”

Morgan is keeping his cards close to his vest when it comes to organizations and marketing partners. But he’s uninhibited about sharing why he is switching to the Pro Modified class, what he thinks of the state of the Pro Stock category, and how the NHRA is faring as the 2017 season prepares to step off Feb. 9-12 with the Circle K Winternationals at Pomona, Calif. (The 12-race J&A Service NHRA Pro Modified Series will open with the March 16-19 Amalie Oil Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla.)

“Here’s the bottom line . . . This is how I looked at it: The Lucas Oil Series is up 31 percent. The NHRA [Mello Yello] Series was up 74 percent. The Pro Mod Series was up 319 percent. It’s a no-brainer,” he said.

Drag racing, Morgan said, is an electrifying sport and a viable commodity. But he has to agree with Erica Enders, who candidly, yet matter-of-factly proclaimed several years ago, “Pro Stock is a hard sell.”

Said Morgan, “I think it’s wonderful. I’ve done it my whole life. I’ve lived every day for this stuff. But when you go to look on a sponsorship (for instead of on?), they’d say, ‘We’re not interested. There’s no way we can get anything out of it because there’s not enough TV.’ And you try to explain that to a sanctioning body and they say, ‘Well, we don’t know what you mean.’ You have to admit that Pro Stock is like red-headed children now. That’s how I look at it.

“This is my point: I could run Pro Stock or I could run Pro Mod. I have an option, right? It costs a million and a half [dollars] to run Pro Stock, and they get maybe 25 percent of the exposure you get on a Pro Mod car,” Morgan said. “So if you’re going to do that, you need to do the Pro Mod car. It only makes good business sense.”

Armed with economic validation, renewed health, and a bold curiosity, the 12-time Pro Stock winner wants to get in on the Pro

Mod action – even though as February approached he hadn’t even gotten behind the wheel of one of the 3,000-horsepower, 250-mph, quarter-mile beasts or switched his competition license.

“I think it’s a real good class, and I think it’s going to step up this year and become something real serious,” Morgan said. “I don’t know how much more [NHRA] can like it, because for the last two years they’ve gotten almost $2 million out of the deal. What the NHRA gets from the Pro Mod association is staggering, I tell you.”

Money matters aside, Morgan said, “I actually am looking forward to it, because I enjoy watching them. I think they’re a good class.

“I’m not scared or I wouldn’t do it at all. I know it’s going to be different, and I’ve got to respect the car a little bit more than I did the car that I was racing. But I do respect what cars can do,” he said. “Those cars are quicker. So I hope that I don’t go over my head driving it. I think they will be fun.”

He said he can apply the same principles to driving a Pro Mod car that he did to driving a Pro Stock car. He knows he has to cut stout lights and keep the car in the groove. Granted, those tasks are easier expressed than executed. But he’s ready to find out how different they are.

“The cars look temperamental to me,” Morgan said. “I think they’re different. It’s not like what I’m accustomed to. They look a lot wilder, that’s for sure. But we like a challenge.”

“I’ll probably have to go to Vegas or Tucson or somewhere out there [out West] and just do some burnouts and stuff,” he said. “But we’re going to go to Florida. There’s a [test session] prior to the Gainesville race, in Orlando, and we’re going to do that deal. I’ve got to get my license upgraded.”

Despite his lack of experience in these sometimes-outrageously rowdy doorslammers, Morgan said he expects to perform admirably in his first year.

“I plan on doing good. I sure hope that we can run good and contend for the championship. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s what we do,” he said.

Physically, he said, he’s up to it.

“I hurt my back in the last few years, and I got it operated on last year. I’m way better than I’ve been. I’m, like, perfect. Almost perfect. How’s that?” Morgan said. “My back was a mess. And it’s all fixed now. I’m good. I had two herniated discs, and it was pinching my sciatic nerve, but it’s 100 percent better than it was.”

Fueling Morgan’s enthusiasm for the Pro Mod class are the Real Pro Mod association’s virtual autonomy, its limited schedule compared to that of the Mello Yello Series, its tough competition, its mix of personalities, and the fact its (it’s?) popular with the younger drag racing fans.

“There’s room for that class,” Morgan said.

He especially liked its “separate but equal” status in relation to other NHRA pro eliminators.

“I think they like it that way,” he said of the RPM racers. “They don’t want to do 24 races. They can’t do 24 races. They’re kind of controlling their own destiny, and that’s probably a good thing.

“The other thing I looked at . . . The day the entries opened, where you could get an entry, they filled it up the first day. How about that?” he said. “I didn’t do that yet. I’m in it. I’m going to run the whole season. I plan on running all of ‘em.”

Morgan is well-aware that qualifying for the 16-car Pro Mod class won’t be any easier than doing so in Pro Stock, that a surprising number of experienced drivers fall below the cutoff line at every event. Nevertheless, he said he’s ready to jump into the talent pool that features as diverse personalities as its engine combinations and body styles.

“I think there’s a lot of characters out there that need to be revealed. There’s a lot of good people out there that people don’t know yet. That class is full of ’em,” he said. “And I like the challenge.

“I have to learn more about the whole program. I don’t know how to talk about it yet,” he said. “There’s just such a range of cars. I think the young kids, they like that.”

Proving that last season was Justin Shearer, “Big Chief” from the reality-TV program “Street Outlaws.” He recorded a public-service announcement for the NHRA at Englishtown last June, then brought his operation to the U.S. Nationals. He didn’t qualify there, but in a sense, he “out-Forced” the legendary and highly popular John Force. His modest pit was overflowing with fans, new NHRA drag racing fans.

“It was cool,” Morgan said. “I went over and saw him. It was really cool, because it was like he was a little fish in a big pond, somewhat. He didn’t have a big truck, but everybody loved him – because of the TV deal. Things like that are the things we need.”

With regret, he said the Pro Stock class might need to make a 911 call.

“After running Pro Stock the last year I did (2015), I saw that – it looked like – that wasn’t going very well. It’s not. I hate to say it. I think the fans are looking for [something] a little different. It’s like my wife said: It’s hurtful when you’re getting ready to pull up and make a run and people are coming out of the stands. That means your eliminator’s almost ready to be eliminated.

“The way I look at Pro Stock . . . Even though I love it, it’s done. I don’t know how it can survive. I’ve been working on a lot of sponsorship for the last year, and people turn their nose up at Pro Stock. I would have a better chance getting money for a Stocker than for Pro Stock,” Morgan said.

“These younger kids are coming in, and apparently they all like Pro Mod – 319 percent viewership, that’s what I look at,” he said, with a warning to the NHRA.

“They can’t let this slip through their fingers because of the TV it gets. You’re talking 319 percent increase from one year to the next. That’s huge,” he said.

The test is how the NHRA can sustain that interest – or, as Morgan put it, “How do you not screw it up?”