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The Wood Brothers: 50 Great Years in Racing.
Part One
By Michael Smith
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Two years ago NASCAR celebrated its 50th anniversary and there was a season-long celebration as drivers and events from stockcar racing’s past were honored and remembered. There is another 50th anniversary taking place during this the first year of the 21st Century: The Wood Brothers Racing Team is celebrating fifty years in NASCAR racing. Stock car racing has undergone so many changes since the late 1940s. Clothing, music and hairstyles change along with auto body shapes, engine displacements and driving styles and it’s the successful team that isn’t afraid to be innovative and progressive in its thinking. Such a team is the Wood Brothers Racing Team, based in Stuart, Virginia. And, while it’s very difficult to come to grips with fifty years of anything, here is a thumbnail sketch of one of NASCAR’s most successful race teams.
Like so many race team owners, Glen Wood started out as a driver. He first worked to field a racecar in 1950, with himself as the driver and younger brother Leonard serving as mechanic. Their first NASCAR start came in 1953 at Martinsville. Like so many fledgling teams, even today, the Wood Brothers struggled initially; they finished 30th that first day at Martinsville. No one would have guessed at their future success.
When their initial Grand National efforts were not overly successful, the Wood Brothers shifted their efforts to the modified circuit, where Glen cut his teeth and gained notoriety as an up-and-coming driver. With this experience under their belts, the brothers eagerly entered into NASCAR’s new convertible division in 1956 – one of the first teams to join. The convertible division, though somewhat ill conceived, was intended to give the NASCAR fans a better look at their favorite drivers as they plied their trade on the track. The convertible division was no second string, lower division by any means. The Wood Brothers team competed against the likes of Joe Weatherly, Fireball Roberts and Curtis Turner. In that first season, Glen posted 15 top-five finishes and ended up 10th in the final point standings.
The Wood Brothers first convertible victory came in 1957 at Fayetteville, North Carolina. Glen would go on to win three more times in 1957 and finish 3rd in points behind Joe Weatherly and Bob Welborn. Leonard was drafted by the US military in 1957, so until his return in 1960, Glen raced without the mechanical skills of his younger brother.
Glen notched one more convertible division victory in 1958 before returning to the Grand National circuit in 1959. Glen qualified well for the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959 but clutch problems sent the car to the garage on lap 149.
Leonard finished his hitch in the military in 1960, returned to the racetrack and the Wood Brothers began to concentrate their efforts on fielding cars for other drivers, as well as Glen. The drivers piloting Wood Brothers sheet metal in that 1960 season is a who’s who list by itself; in addition to Glen Wood, Fred Harb, Junior Johnson, Jimmy Massey, Speedy Thompson, Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly and Bob Welborn all raced in cars for the Wood Brothers Team.
Fittingly, the team’s first Grand National win came when Glen brought home the checkers in a 50-mile event at Winston-Salem. Glen would win a total of three races that year and Speedy Thompson would live up to his name, notching the team’s first major victory by winning the inaugural National 500 in Charlotte. The 1961 season would see the Wood Brothers struggle a bit, bringing home no victories in 15 starts, but gaining the attention of the Ford Motor Company as a faithful Ford team.
It was during the 1963 season that the Wood Brothers scored their storybook win at Daytona with Tiny Lund behind the wheel of their number 21 Ford. Days earlier, the hulking “Tiny” had pulled the Wood Brother’s primary driver, Marvin Panch, from the flaming wreckage of a Masarati race car he had been testing on the Daytona track. Badly injured, Panch was checked in to a hospital and the Wood Brothers were left without a driver heading into the racing season’s premier event. Coincidentally, Tiny Lund was without a ride and following some discussion, it was decided to let Tiny Lund pilot the Wood Brother’s car in the Daytona 500. The result is a part of NASCAR lore.
Relying on lighting fast pit stops, and a bit of luck (he ran out of gas at the finish line) Tiny Lund put the Wood Brothers Ford Galaxie in victory lane, gaining his first NASCAR victory in a “borrowed” ride.
Race winning pit stops became the Wood Brothers trademark and their speed and efficiency on pit road were the standard by which other teams would begin to measure themselves. In NASCAR’s formative years pit stops were not the orchestrated and choreographed things they are today. Occasionally, drivers would even exit the car during a pit stop to grab a bite to eat or help the crew. The Wood Brothers determined that seconds gained in the pits meant seconds gained on the track. In fact, the Wood Brothers team was so well regarded that they were hired by Ford to conduct the pit work for Jimmy Clark’s Lotus Ford team during the 1965 running of the Indianapolis 500 where they contributed significantly to putting Clark in victory lane. The Wood Brothers team conducted two blistering pit stops during the 500 and, forgoing tire changes both times, they sent Clark back out onto the track with a total off-track pit time of just 40 seconds.
When Ford made the decision to re-enter the NASCAR fray, the Wood Brothers were among the first teams to be re-connected to the important factory support, both technically and financially. Glen Wood climbed out of the car for good at the end of the 1964 season, after running with Dan Gurney, Marvin Panch and Nelson Stacy as teammates that year.
A stocky South Carolinian named Cale Yarborough joined the growing list of Wood Brothers drivers in 1966. Yarborough, along with Dan Gurney, Marvin Panch, Curtis Turner and A.J. Foyt, piloted Ford Fairlanes that season and, in 1967 Yarborough notched two wins driving with teammates Earl Balmer and Parnelli Jones.
The 1968 season found the Wood Brothers team racing Mercury Cyclones with Yarborough behind the wheel. The factory mandated switch to Mercury proved to be a positive move. Yarborough put the Wood Brothers Cyclone on the pole for the Daytona 500 with a qualifying speed just a tick under 190 miles per hour. Yarborough’s domination continued through the race as he finished first, ahead of LeeRoy Yarbrough, also in a Mercury Cyclone. The Wood Brothers team would finish out the 1968 season with 7 wins: 6 with Yarborough behind the wheel and one with Dan Gurney at the controls.
Yarborough’s tenure with the Wood Brothers would continue until the end of the 1970 season and in that time, the team helped him to an additional 5 wins. Following Yarborough’s departure from the team, the Wood Brothers secured the services of Donnie Allison and A.J. Foyt for the 1971 season. These two legends entered a combined 15 races that year; with Allison posting 1 victory and Foyt bringing home the checkered flag four times.
The 1972 season saw Foyt return to drive a Wood Brothers car in 6 NASCAR events. In the course of those six starts, Foyt won three pole positions and two victories. Strangely enough, it wasn’t Foyt’s successful limited schedule with the team that heralded the dawn of a new era at Wood Brothers. Nineteen seventy-two is also the year that David Pearson joined the Wood Brothers team to create what arguably became the greatest team-driver combination in NASCAR history. That year, Pearson piloted a Wood Brothers car in 14 events, recording four pole positions and six victories. The best was yet to come.
David Pearson first started driving a car at ten years of age. He quit school during the tenth grade in order to begin working in a local cotton mill to earn money for a car. He cut his teeth on local tracks, claiming a local championship at Greenville-Pickens raceway in 1959. Local residents, seeing his obvious talent, took up a collection to help him buy a car to run in the 1960 Daytona 500. Looking back on it years later, Pearson recalled that he did not really want to run the event, but he couldn’t return the money because it had been gathered a few pennies at a time from local townsfolk. Pearson bought the car and ran the Daytona 500, finishing several laps down after experiencing distributor trouble, but finishing nonetheless.
Pearson went on to score back to back championships driving for Holman-Moody in 1968 and 1969 before Ford pulled its support in 1970. For a short time, Pearson ran races for Ray Nichels before being picked up by the Wood Brothers, a driving job he’d wanted all along. Week after week of following the Wood Brothers car around the track convinced Pearson he would really dominate in one of their machines.
As if to reinforce Pearson’s confidence in the Wood Brothers performance, he took their car to victory lane in the very first race he ran for them, the Rebel 400 at Darlington in 1970. Pearson would remain with the Wood Brothers team through the 1979 season, claiming multiple victories each year, including an amazing 11 wins in 1973 and 10 wins in 1976. David Pearson summed it up in Peter Golenbock’s book The Last Lap: “Like I say, the Wood Brothers are smart people. They know racing. All of them.”
Perhaps the most memorable, and certainly the most often replayed finish, in NASCAR came at the end of the 1976 Daytona 500 when Pearson, driving for the Wood Brothers, tangled with Richard Petty during the final lap of the race. Both cars came spinning down the front stretch and into the infield grass. Pearson stomped the clutch and, by keeping his engine fired, managed to limp across the finish line in first place. There isn’t a year that passes without this footage being run on television at some point during the NASCAR season.
Pearson’s final season with the Wood Brothers came in 1979. That season he competed in just 5 races for the team, posting one pole position and one second place finish. Though he would return to racing temporarily over the next couple of years, David Pearson would not race a full schedule ever again, but his 105 NASCAR victories place him second only to Richard Petty on the all time win list, a statistic he can be proud of, and for which some large measure of credit belongs to the Wood Brothers team.
Next Time: Part Two of the Wood Brothers Saga
copyright 2000, Michael Smith
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