Wood Brothers Cautious Approach Paying OffSubmitted by Jim Pedley on Thursday, 13 August 20092 Comments Eddie
Wood, Len Wood and their driver, Bill Elliott. (Photo by Jason
Smith/Getty Images )
By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
During the annual NASCAR media tour in Charlotte, N.C., last January,
officials from the Wood Brothers Racing team and Ford Racing took to a
dais and explained how they were returning to the past in order to
improve the future.
Reaction from reporters gathered in the hotel ballroom varied.
Body language, in the form of rolled eyes, indicated that some people
were not buying into the improved future part of the explanation to cut
the famous No. 21 2009 schedule back to just a few select races.
Others in the room just looked plain sad that one of the great teams in
all of racing would be pushed to the point of having to retrench.
But the Wood Brothers and Ford folks all assured those in the room the
move was a good one.
Now, over a half season later, it appears they might have been right.
The decision to compete in just a handful of races this season while
concentrating on making the team's cars better is showing results.
"It's really helped us," Wood Brothers co-owner Eddie Wood said this
week.
This weekend, the Wood Brothers and their driver, Bill Elliott, are
entered in a Sprint Cup for the eighth time this year.
They have qualified for all seven of the other races they have entered
with three of those qualifying efforts landing them top-10 starting
positions.
Once the races have started, the team has continued to perform well.
They have two top-16 finishes and the only time Elliott has not finished
in the top 30 was when he was wrecked in Atlanta.
The numbers the Woods and Elliott have posted are not Chase-like, but
that has not been the goal.
Elliott's average finish, even with the DNF, is 24th. If the team were
to have run like that for an entire schedule, it would have easily been
in the group which does not have to qualify on time to get into race
fields.
"I think every week that we show up to the race track," Wood said,
"we've been fast off the truck, and they seemed to be getting better and
better."
The roots of plan to step back were planted in the usual place -
economics.
"We first decided to cut back, which that was due largely to
sponsorship, and you start looking for money, you look for money all
year long," Wood said. "As August, September, October got closer, we
thought, 'Man, we're not going to get enough to run the whole deal, so
what are we going to do quit?'
"We went and had a conversation with Edsel Ford and Jim Farley at Ford
Racing and thought, why don't we just run, we've got some Motorcraft
money, some Ford money, lets just run a few races with that money and do
it properly with that money."
So the team began spending more time and money in the race shop.
"The amount of work and preparation that goes in every week, it's the
same as racing every week, we just don't load the car and go somewhere,"
Wood said. "We spend a lot of time with the wind tunnel, the shaker rigs
and pull-down rigs that Ford Racing provides, and all of that stuff
being said, it just works better. The schedule fits what we are good at,
what Bill's good at, and so far it's really working."
This weekend, the team and driver will be at a place they know very
well, and a place where they have run very well.
Elliott has 58 starts at Michigan International Speedway, and seven
victories. That victory total is best among active drivers.
His 29 top-10 finishes ties Mark Martin for most by any driver.
Even though Elliott is 53 years old, Eddie Wood knows the team's
problems are not with the driver.
"The car that we're bringing back is the car we ran earlier there in the
summer," Wood said of the No. 21 Ford which qualified 15th and finished
16th in June. "I think it's going to be really competitive. The biggest
problem we've had in the last two races, we can't get off pit road.
We've been having problems on pit road and with the pits, and we're
working on that everyday.
"Its something that's really aggravating me because we finally got the
car where it's competitive, and Bill's doing a great job, and the thing
we're supposed to be the best with we're struggling with. We're working
on that, and if we can get in and out of the pits and stay out of
trouble, I think we can run top 10 with it."
The question many of the team's fans have about the Wood Brothers'
future is, will they ever run again full time?
Good question, Wood said.
"It's economy driven, and it's hitting every business, every person in
the country," he said. "Racing is suffering from it as well, at the
tracks, with teams. For the time being, that's where we're going in with
it. If tomorrow morning we run into a little bit of money, then we'll
run some more races this year than we planned.
"We're not going to get into that situation where you do that start and
park stuff like some of those guys are doing, those so called business
men that are doing that, that's not racing, that's not us and that's
really not what NASCAR was built on. We're just going to do what we can
afford to do, and do it properly."
- Jim Pedley can be reached at
jpedley@racintoday.com 
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