WOOD BROTHERS RETURN TO FULL TIME RACING
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For the first time in nearly a decade, NASCAR’s oldest team will run the entire Sprint Cup Series schedule.
The Wood Brothers recently announced plans to race the No. 21 Ford over a 36-race schedule for the first time since 2008 with driver Ryan Blaney competing for Rookie of the Year honors.
With that news and a technical alliance with Team Penske, whose drivers Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski won seven races last season, team co-owner Len Wood believes a return trip to the winners’ circle won’t be far off.
“I’d like to think that we could be in Victory Circle reasonably soon, maybe the Daytona 500,” he said. “That’s one of our favorite races, but I think building on our performance last year, some of our best races we were fourth and seventh, build on some more of those. I’m looking forward to going back to some of the tracks we haven't been to for a while like Atlanta, Martinsville – I really love road courses and things like that, places that present an opportunity that’s a little different, even like a Pocono.”
The Wood Brothers’ last victory came at one of those wild-card races in 2011, when rookie Trevor Bayne became the youngest winner in Daytona 500 history.
Overall, the team has 98 wins in 1,438 Cup Series starts.
The first start came in 1953 with team co-founder Glen Wood serving as the driver.
Speedy Thompson gave the team a first victory in 1960 and the list of NASCAR Hall of Fame drivers who have piloted Wood Brothers cars include Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Dale Jarrett.
Pearson scored the team’s most famous NASCAR victory in the 1976
Daytona 500 and 43 of his 105 career Sprint Cup victories came behind the wheel of the No. 21 Mercury.
Running a limited schedule, some of the other racing greats who won in the Wood Brothers cars are a who’s who of racing -- A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Marvin Panch, Donnie Allison, Tiny Lund, Neil Bonnett and Buddy Baker.
Blaney, the 22-year-old son of NASCAR veteran Dave Blaney, talked about the enormous history of the team.
“It’s amazing once you put the time into researching them,” Blaney said. “You see how deep it goes and how much history is with this team. To know you’re driving for a team that has been around so long with so many great drivers, it makes you appreciate what you have a lot more.”
The NASCAR stats don’t show arguably the Wood Brothers’ most famous triumph when Glen and Leonard Wood revolutioned pit stops at Indy and led Englishman Jimmy Clark’s winning effort in the 1965 Indianapolis 500.
But, it is NASCAR where the team has applied its trade for most of its history and with a heavy emphasis on the superspeedway races.
Pearson won 11 races in just 18 starts in 1973.
But, times have changed.
What used to be an advantage to concentrate on the bigger races when the NASCAR teams were smaller is now a disadvantage. The number of engineers now employed in the sport means it’s easy to fall behind with the latest innovations if you’re not at the track every week.
Blaney, who had top-10 finishes at Talladega and Kansas last season, called the opportunity to race full-time in the Cup Series, every young racer’s dream.
Crew chief Jeremy Bullins knows while Blaney has a reputation as an extremely talented driver with four wins in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and four in the Camping World Truck Series, this season presents a much bigger challenge. Asked how he sees the Cup Series being different from past series, he said the obvious answer is the competition.
“When we were having success in the Xfinity Series there were usually two or three teams that separated themselves, and on Sunday there are 30 teams that can win a race on most weeks,” Bullins said. “At the end of the year when we started getting a good direction and top 10s, you get excited about where you’re headed. With the Xfinity deal you’re sometimes limited on sets of tires and things like that, so it dictates your strategy a little bit, so, for me, the strategy part is more fun on the Cup side. It’s fun racing and we’re looking forward to it.”