Q&A with Wood Brothers Racing’s Eddie Wood

BY BEN WHITE

Beginning in the late 1950s, Eddie Wood sorted nuts and bolts and swept floors after school. By the time he was old enough to become a full-fledged crew member for his father’s famous Wood Brothers Racing NASCAR team in the early 1970s, Wood had already seen several legends drive the team’s No. 21 race cars. Wood, now co-owner of Wood Brothers Racing, recently sat down with NASCAR Pole Position and answered our questions about growing up in the sport and continuing his family’s racing tradition.

WHAT ARE YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES OF THE WOOD BROTHERS RACING SHOP?

(Laughter) It was a wooden building built over a bank and it looked like it was about to fall down. It had stilts and was built up with a wooden floor. I guess it held two cars. I remember going in there and I had to have been younger than 5. They built the shop in Stuart, Virginia, they were in all those years in 1956, and it was before that. I was born in 1952.

DID YOU ALWAYS KNOW YOU WOULD END UP WORKING IN NASCAR?

You just kind of grew up with racing and it was just a gradual thing. I didn’t just wake up one day and say I want to drive race cars. I never wanted to drive and it wasn’t encouraged at all. At 16 or 18, I wanted to run Bowman Gray Stadium but didn’t care about anywhere else. (Laughter) I wanted to run a Ford Pinto with a Boss 429 engine, which would have been totally the wrong approach. ANY EARLY CHILDHOOD HEROES COME TO MIND?

I graduated from college in 1972 and started going to race tracks after that, and even skipped graduation to go racing at Michigan. I was racing full time and that was a big deal. That was the beginning of the David Pearson era and our time with him started in April of that year at Darlington. This would have been at the end of May. I was always close to David. My brother, Len, and I both were.

We were close to all the drivers – Cale (Yarborough), A.J. (Foyt) – they were like normal people to us. (Laughter) They picked on us a lot, but it was good fun. We had a good time, especially with Pearson. There was Donnie Allison, too. They were just cool guys. You looked up to them as heroes and I still do.

YOUR FATHER, GLEN WOOD, FOUNDED THE TEAM IN 1950. HOW WAS HE TO BE AROUND AS A FATHER AND ALSO AS A TEAM OWNER?

He was very laid back and very methodical. He didn’t do things quickly, as far as making decisions. Sometimes I guess he did because in racing you have to. But for the most part, he didn’t. He always seemed to make the right decision. He would think things through. Even when we were young, the things we wanted to get into, he always had a grown-up look at it. Sometimes you were right on the mark and sometimes you were way off. He was always right.

Leonard (Wood) was and is the same way. They had already been racing 22 years before I came into this full time. They had already been there and done that. Leonard is 87 now. He’s still a kid. That really works well with Len and me. Growing up, he liked things we liked and still does. We were his helpers and what he said is what we did. We wouldn’t ask questions. We just did it.

HAVE YOU EVER STOPPED TO THINK ABOUT EVERYTHING WOOD BROTHERS RACING HAS ACCOMPLISHED – SUCH AS 99 CUP SERIES WINS AND FIVE DAYTONA 500 VICTORIES – WITH SO MANY GREAT DRIVERS?

I guess you look back at it and you’re in the middle of it and you’re around it, it just felt like that’s what we should be doing. That was kind of normal. I remember all the way back to Marvin Panch in the early 1960s. I remember 1963 when Tiny Lund won the Daytona 500 when Marvin was injured. I met Curtis Turner and watched him race in the mid-1960s from the infield.

I remember hanging out with (driver) G.C. Spencer’s son, Dale Jarrett as a kid, Kyle Petty as a kid, Richie Panch, Marvin’s son who drove in the Cup Series for a time. We were all kids that weren’t old enough to go inside the garage so we hung out in the infield. Most people had station wagons. That’s where the food was. There are photos where the pit crew would come to eat before races. It was like an elaborate picnic. The Pettys did that, too.

WHAT WAS DAVID PEARSON LIKE? MAGICAL IS A WORD THAT COMES TO MIND.

Yes, we just clicked with David. And things clicked from the time he sat down in our car at Darlington at the 1972 Rebel 400 and turned that first lap. He sat on the pole and led most of the laps and won the race. I believe he won six races that year. A.J. drove the car that year and won the Daytona 500 and Ontario 500, but had to go back to Indy car racing. Pearson won 43 races in our Mercurys through April of 1979. YOUR FAMILY IS ONE OF THE MOST LOVED IN MOTORSPORTS, ESPECIALLY FOR YOUR DOWNHOME APPROACH. WHERE DID THAT GENUINE, HUMBLE DEMEANOR ORIGINATE?

I don’t know. It just worked out that way. Our mom and dad were very low key and that’s the way it’s always been. I guess all of us in the Wood family are also kind of low key as well. My dad grew up during the Great Depression, so he was very conservative and so was my mom. They grew up like that and were very humble people. That was just kind of the way they were and so are we. We’re nothing special. We’re just like everyone else.