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Sprint Cup
CUP: The Woods of VA. – Glen Grabs Wheel
The Wood Brothers Racing Team has been one of the backbones of NASCAR since the sport was founded...
Glen Wood circles the track in his 1956 convertible. (File photo courtesy of Wood Brothers Racing)
The Wood Brothers Racing Team has been one of the backbones of NASCAR since the sport was founded. The Woods, from Stuart, Va., have been racing continuously in the division now known as Sprint Cup since 1953 and have 96 wins to their credit.
In a RacinToday exclusive series, Eddie Wood, one of the second-generation members of the team, will discuss what he considers the top 10 wins in Wood Brothers history.
The wins aren’t ranked in any particular order. This week’s entry recalls the first major NASCAR win for Eddie’s dad, Glen Wood. It came in a Convertible race at Fayetteville, N.C., on March 10, 1957.
The stories from the day reported about how the “Woodchopper” from Stuart, Va., driving his own Ford, outran the factory backed cars to get the victory.
To really appreciate the meaning of that win, it’s best to show how Wood, then 31, got to that point.
Wood was making a living as a sawmill operator. He’d locate a tract of timber, purchase it, then haul his mill into the woods, saw the logs into lumber and sell the finished product.
He started his saw-milling career at the bottom of the pecking order – shoveling sawdust from under the edger, a machine that saws the edges from wider boards, making narrower boards of uniform dimensions. And he had to tote off the slabs, the unusable portion of the logs that were shaved off to square up the round logs so they could be cut into lumber.
Soon he was the sawyer, the boss, controlling the saw and determining the optimum use for each log placed before him. Wood said he was an accomplished sawmiller, but conversations over coffee at a local restaurant soon led him in an entirely different direction, career-wise.
Wood and four friends, who had been traveling to local race tracks to watch Curtis Turner and others do battle, decided to build their own car.
Soon there were only two partners, Wood and Chris Williams. They took a 1938 Ford coupe that had been wrecked and made it into a race car, which they took to Morris Speedway, a track located between Stuart and Martinsville, Va.
After three rain-outs, it was finally time to race, but the driver didn’t show.
“I decided I’d drive it,” Wood said.
During the race, there was damage to the rear-end housing, so Wood headed for home, with the car in tow. “About 10 miles up the road, the wheel started wobbling. It broke the axle, and it fell down on the highway and the car caught fire.”
Back home, the general feeling was that it was for the best. Maybe Wood would give up this foolish pursuit and go back to work in the woods with his sawmill. “That irritated me somewhat,” he said.
Wood’s reaction to the initial setback illustrates the mettle and desire that has kept him in the racing business all these years. And now at 84, he’s by far the oldest and longest-tenured car owner in the garage.
“Three weeks later we had that car going again and finished third,” he said.
In a RacinToday exclusive series, Eddie Wood, one of the second-generation members of the team, will discuss what he considers the top 10 wins in Wood Brothers history.
The wins aren’t ranked in any particular order. This week’s entry recalls the first major NASCAR win for Eddie’s dad, Glen Wood. It came in a Convertible race at Fayetteville, N.C., on March 10, 1957.
The stories from the day reported about how the “Woodchopper” from Stuart, Va., driving his own Ford, outran the factory backed cars to get the victory.
To really appreciate the meaning of that win, it’s best to show how Wood, then 31, got to that point.
Wood was making a living as a sawmill operator. He’d locate a tract of timber, purchase it, then haul his mill into the woods, saw the logs into lumber and sell the finished product.
He started his saw-milling career at the bottom of the pecking order – shoveling sawdust from under the edger, a machine that saws the edges from wider boards, making narrower boards of uniform dimensions. And he had to tote off the slabs, the unusable portion of the logs that were shaved off to square up the round logs so they could be cut into lumber.
Soon he was the sawyer, the boss, controlling the saw and determining the optimum use for each log placed before him. Wood said he was an accomplished sawmiller, but conversations over coffee at a local restaurant soon led him in an entirely different direction, career-wise.
Wood and four friends, who had been traveling to local race tracks to watch Curtis Turner and others do battle, decided to build their own car.
Soon there were only two partners, Wood and Chris Williams. They took a 1938 Ford coupe that had been wrecked and made it into a race car, which they took to Morris Speedway, a track located between Stuart and Martinsville, Va.
After three rain-outs, it was finally time to race, but the driver didn’t show.
“I decided I’d drive it,” Wood said.
During the race, there was damage to the rear-end housing, so Wood headed for home, with the car in tow. “About 10 miles up the road, the wheel started wobbling. It broke the axle, and it fell down on the highway and the car caught fire.”
Back home, the general feeling was that it was for the best. Maybe Wood would give up this foolish pursuit and go back to work in the woods with his sawmill. “That irritated me somewhat,” he said.
Wood’s reaction to the initial setback illustrates the mettle and desire that has kept him in the racing business all these years. And now at 84, he’s by far the oldest and longest-tenured car owner in the garage.
“Three weeks later we had that car going again and finished third,” he said.
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