Speedy Thompson was the first driver to wheel the famed No. 21 Ford to victory lane for Wood Brothers Racing way back in 1960 with a win at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Ninety-eight wins followed over the next seven decades, all the way through Ryan Blaney’s victory at Pocono Raceway in 2017. And then one of NASCAR’s pioneering teams stalled.
Wood Brothers, despite a tight alliance with Team Penske and strong support from Ford Motor Co., sat on 99 wins for more than six years. The drought finally ended over the weekend when Harrison Burton gave the organization win No. 100 with a victory — the first of his Cup Series career — in an upset thriller at Daytona International Speedway.
The win earned Burton one of the last remaining spots in the playoff field and finally gave team co-owners Eddie and Len Wood the victory their late father had long eyed. Glen Wood, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, founded the team in 1950 with his brothers Leonard, Ray Lee, Delano and Clay.
The team to this day operates out of Stuart, Virginia, and is run by the second and third generations of the Wood family. Glen Wood died in 2019 at the age of 93.
“There’s nothing better than winning at Daytona,” said Eddie Wood, who called the facility his favorite NASCAR track. “Winning here is bigger to me than winning somewhere else. It’s just special. Our dad raced on the beach, actually on the sand. God, that was almost 75 years ago. I think he ran the first race he ever run on the sand in 1953. That’s a long time ago. Winning Daytona is just really special for our family.”
Wood Brothers and Ford
Burton’s win was the 16th at Daytona for the No. 21, which won five Daytona 500s and 11 more times in NASCAR’s annual summer stop at the track. Burton is the 19th driver to win a Cup race for the family.
The single-car team was once one of the most dominant entries in the Cup garage until it hit lean years that only worsened with the 2008 recession. It took help from Ford — the only manufacturer the team has ever partnered with — to keep the doors open.
“There’s so many things in a guy’s life, everybody’s life, one phone call, one place you happen to be at a certain time, timing is everything,” Eddie Wood said. “But there was a phone call from Edsel Ford back in 2008. We were really struggling. He said, ‘I’m going to have a gentleman call you tomorrow that’s going to help you.’
“That man’s name was Jim Farley, who is now the CEO of Ford Motor Co. That’s how far back things go. Our family raced Ford Motor Co. products since the beginning, 1950. I think that’s one of the most things I’m really, really proud of.”
The Ford assistance wasn’t really enough to make Wood Brothers a contender again, and the turnaround still didn’t happen after win No. 98, the Daytona 500 in 2011 with rookie Trevor Bayne.
Burton’s victory Saturday night is just the fourth win for the No. 21 since 2000. Elliott Sadler won Bristol in 2001, Bayne won the Daytona 500 and Blaney at Pocono in 2017 in a win that was aided by Roger Penske’s intervention.
Penske in 2014 needed a seat for Blaney and wanted to align with a team where he could develop young personnel. Wood Brothers, like Penske a heavy Ford team, was the perfect fit.
More challenges
When NASCAR introduced its charter system in 2016, Wood Brothers didn’t get one despite being one of the oldest teams in Cup history. Without the charter, the No. 21 wasn’t guaranteed a spot in the field each week and its percentage of the purse payouts was dramatically smaller than chartered teams.
Jon Wood, Eddie’s son and a former driver, is now the team president and said not landing a charter was nearly rock bottom.
“When we didn’t get a charter, and we were talking about it, it was the lowest point of lows,” Jon Wood said. “We had to come here, face the music, and say, ‘I think we’ll be OK.’ And we are. That’s the part that’s just so surreal in this. You go from the lowest of lows to just on top of it.”
The team did not secure a full charter until 2021.
What’s next
Burton, unfortunately, hasn’t worked out for the organization the way Penske had hoped and the decision was made earlier this season to release the 23-year-old at the end of the year. The Penske drivers were among the many competitors who went to victory lane to congratulate Burton on his breakthrough victory.
“Obviously, the way the last three years have gone has not been the way I wanted to represent myself, the way I wanted to represent this team,” Burton said. “And then to have the walls closing in on, you know, there’s a definite end to my time to get to drive this historic car, and then to find a way to win while those walls are closing in, to me, is really, really special.
“It almost makes the last three years worth it, but I would’ve much rather won before now. It’s just been so hard, and that’s the way it should be. The Cup Series is really, really hard. But to get the Wood Brothers’ 100th win, get my very first Cup win, it’s just really, really hard to put in words.”
Burton has 11 races remaining in the No. 21 and will be part of the 16-driver playoff field when it starts two weeks from now at Atlanta Motor Speedway. That’s 11 weeks for Burton to make more history with a historic NASCAR team.
___
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
