ShareThisIf you've ever wondered why perennial mid-packers and backmarkers continue to come to the track with a remote chance of beating the Big Boys of NASCAR -- Hendrick, Gibbs, Roush, Childress and Evernham -- then the venerable Wood Brothers showed at Watkins Glen why they show up each week."This is why you do this," explained Eddie Wood, co-owner of the team that began racing in 1950. Eddie, son of Glen and Bernece Wood, had just watched driver Marcos Ambrose steer his way to a third-place finish at the Glen, the organization's first top-five finish since Ricky Rudd's fourth-place run at Bristol three years ago.Over the past decade or so, the sport has not been kind to the Wood Brothers, both off the track and on it. Sponsorship woes have occurred from affiliation to affiliation, and the racing performance has been sub-par at best.Since 1996, its first season with driver Michael Waltrip, the Virginia-based team has very few top-five finishes, with Ambrose, the Tasmanian who drove like a devil and passed 90 cars Sunday, providing the lucky 13th in the last 13 years. Along the way were 58 DNFs.This year has been another tough one. The group has failed to make eight of the 22 races so far, including the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis event -- two of the biggest paydays of the season -- which is particularly damaging to a single-car operation.But fellow Virginian Elliott Sadler provided the team's major highlight in 2001. Sadler, a native of Emporia, worked a tire-strategy gamble -- the series used a very hard compound that day -- and raced on old but reliable rubber over the final 162 laps to win the spring race at Bristol.That win is near and dear to the hearts of Sadler and the Wood Brothers -- it was the team's 97th victory -- but it also marked another historic moment. While still grieving over Dale Earnhardt's death five weeks earlier, 150,000 fans were able to see the famous Nos. 21 and 43 finish 1-2 again, like a scene from the 1970s.If you're ever lucky enough to attend a race at the legendary Martinsville Speedway, try to plan an extra day on the trip. After being awed by the half-mile track just a few miles into Virginia from the North Carolina side, pick up Highway 58 west, which meanders on over to Stuart, Va.Look for the Wood Brothers museum/alternate race shop and plan on spending at least a couple of hours there. Miss Bernece often serves as a tour guide of sorts, politely explaining the team's history and finding time to brag on her racing grandsons, Jon and Keven, like any good grandparent would.More importantly, read the aging newspapers -- some Wood Brothers stories go back 50 years -- and look at the black-and-white photographs of the organization's formative years, when young mechanics Leonard and Glen Wood looked up to a nearby sawmill owner, Curtis Turner, for advice and inspiration in their racing endeavors.Then you'll see why the Wood Brothers do this.(Bill Whitehead covers NASCAR for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. E-mail wwhitehe@ircc.net.)
Wood Brothers race because they love it
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 08/15/2008 - 15:57
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