SENIOR SALUTE
PRESENTED BY
Q&A WITH MASTER MECHANIC
LEONARD WOOD BY BEN WHITE
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eonard Wood, younger brother of 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame driver and team owner Glen Wood, has been
turning wrenches on race-winning engines in NASCAR competition since he was a child. The famed Virginia-based Wood Brothers Racing organization began fielding modifieds for Glen Wood at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Since the early 1960s, Leonard Wood has worked as crew chief for a very long list of iconic drivers. In this interview with NASCAR Pole Position, 87-year-old Leonard Wood, a NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee in 2013, discusses growing up working on cars, seeing his first race car, his love for mechanical things and working with NASCAR’s greatest legends. WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST RECOLLECTION OF SEEING A RACE CAR? There was a guy named Preacher Pearlman. We happened to be out on the highway, and I was riding in a car and this race car came driving by. They used to have a track in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and he was on the road driving it to the race. It was a 1937 Ford. DID MECHANICAL THINGS COME EASY TO YOU FROM AN EARLY AGE? Oh, yeah. I’ve always been interested in them, for sure. I remember my dad had me help put a transmission in a 1939 Ford when I was 7 years old. I was so small I could climb down in there and put my feet against the engine and turn a long-handled wrench and my dad wouldn’t have to retighten the steel head
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bolts on the cylinder heads. I also remember whittling cars out of wood with a pocketknife, also when I was 7 years old. DID YOU EVER WANT TO DRIVE RACE CARS? (Laughter) Oh, no. I thought it was too dangerous, especially when they’d come by me at 190 miles an hour on pit road at Daytona (before pit road speeds). About all the driving I did was warming up the car at Martinsville, and I just loved to feel the purr of the thing. I remember I was working on the carburetor on the 1971 Mercury when David Pearson was driving for us in 1973. I took the car out on the track and the good news was there was so much power it broke the back end loose. The bad news was I spun the car in a 180 and I thought I was going to crash. I was able to save it. PHOTOGRAPHY: NASCAR HALL OF FAME
