Kyle Petty still wears a mustache. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The winning car, Wood said, actually was one purchased from Petty Enterprises, which had always had fast short track cars.

“It was a Hutcherson-Pagan car,” Wood said. “It wound up being our Bristol car. It lasted a long, long time.”

In fact, in it’s last run, at Bristol, Dale Jarrett was poised to win when a wheel broke, leading to a car-killing crash.

“It was a good race car,” Wood said.

Eddie Wood doesn’t remember much about the post-Richmond celebration. The main thing he recalled was the rush to get ready for the next race, at Rockingham.

But he did remember a pact that didn’t exactly work out.

When the Woods first hooked up with Petty, Eddie and Len Wood and Kyle Petty all three wore mustaches. The agreement was that they’d all shave them off when the won their first race.

Eddie shaved his off, as did Len, but Kyle didn’t follow through. “I don’t think (wife) Pattie would let him,” Wood laughed. “He never did until this day.”

The friendship between the Woods and Kyle Petty also continues to this day, even though the racing arrangement didn’t last.

“It’s a shame it ended,” Wood said. “But for whatever reason, a lot of great things in racing have to stop. But we had something really good.”

Rick Minter is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist who joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1991 covering motorsports as well as serving as a bureau chief. From 2000-2008 Minter focused on racing exclusively, traveling the NASCAR circuit as the paper’s motorsports writer.

Rick can be reached at rminter@racintoday.com