DEARBORN, Mich. - Wood Brothers Racing is in the midst of celebrating its 75th anniversary season, all of which have included Ford Motor Company products on track, so it only seems fitting that the team would recognize one of its most celebrated moments during one of NASCAR’s most popular weekends.
When the No. 21 Ford Mustang Dark Horse hits the track at Darlington Raceway for the NASCAR Cup Series Goodyear 400 this weekend, it won’t have the familiar red, white and black colors that it normally flies for sponsor Motorcraft. Instead, it will have the British racing green livery that Jim Clark made famous by winning the 1965 Indianapolis 500 in his No. 82 Lotus Ford.
The scheme was unveiled publicly on March 20 at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, MI, and the event featured Clark’s Lotus, which has been on display at the museum since 2015, and driver Josh Berry’s Mustang facing each other in front of the “Driving America” exhibit.
"The Wood Brothers have been loyal to Ford Motor Company for 75 years, and I cherish the relationship we have with them on and off the track," said Edsel B. Ford II, who attended the unveiling with his wife, Cynthia. "The Jim Clark livery for Darlington is absolutely stunning. If they have a contest for which team has the best-looking car, quite frankly, it won't be close. The Wood Brothers will win that hands down."
The victory by Clark was a significant motorsports achievement for many reasons. First, it represented Ford’s first win in one of the world’s most famous races, and it was historic because Clark was the first driver to win while driving a rear-engine car. But how does a team synonymous with stock car racing and Virginia end-up carrying the colors of a British open wheel racing hero? Because Ford officials, feeling a need to improve the team’s pit stops, enlisted the help of the Wood Brothers team that had already revolutionized the way NASCAR did it.
“Darlington is a place where you celebrate motorsports history. It doesn’t have to be NASCAR history, it’s just the history of motorsports,” said Jon Wood, president, Wood Brothers Racing. “I think we’ve been sort of trained to think that we have to do David Pearson throwbacks and Richard Petty throwbacks and that’s what matters. It does, but there are other parts of our motorsports history and just history alike that are impactful. That makes this Darlington race as special as it is. So, for those reasons, there’s no better place to run this scheme than Darlington.”
In the words of NASCAR Hall of Famer Leonard Wood, whom many in the Cup garage have called a genius for his mechanical problem-solving prowess, winning that race and being able to participate in the unveiling of this tribute car is something he’ll never forget.
“This is one of the greatest moments in my life,” he said during the ceremony. “Looking back, pitting that car 60 years ago and then looking at this one to celebrate 75 years, it’s been awesome. I want to thank Ford Motor Company and Edsel Ford for all of the support that they’ve given us our entire racing career. We’ve run nothing but Ford products, and I’m so proud of it and so proud to be part of the family.”
The race team was founded in 1950 by NASCAR Hall of Famer Glen Wood. He captured the first three wins for the team in NASCAR, all of which came at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, NC, and since then a total of 20 drivers have combined to win 101 races. And with Berry’s early season success, the team shows no signs of slowing down.
“As long as there’s NASCAR, I hope that we’re a part of it. We’ve been with NASCAR since the beginning. We’ve been with Ford Motor Company since the beginning and those two relationships are how we keep going,” said Wood Brothers Racing Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wood. “We’ve gone through some really, really scary low times where it looked like there was just no way it was gonna work out, but you keep grinding away at it day after day. I think taking it a day at a time, that’s probably an overused quote, but it’s so true, especially with us. You get to this point and you get to this point and you just keep going. The biggest thing, to me, is you can’t quit. You can’t think about quitting and you never give up.”
Eddie Wood told the assembled guests a story about a phone call he had with Edsel Ford in 2008 that changed the fortunes of his family-operated team.
“My phone rang and it was Edsel,” started Wood. “He said, ‘How come I haven’t heard anything from you? Where have you been?’ And I said, ‘Mr. Ford, we’ve run so bad I’m actually ashamed to call you.’ And his exact words were, ‘You’re telling me my 21 is broken?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir. It’s pretty well broken.’”
The team had missed some of the biggest races that year, including the Daytona 500, Brickyard 400 and the Coca-Cola 600, but Ford had a plan. A plan which included having current CEO Jim Farley help the team get back on solid footing. Farley had just started at Ford as group vice president of global marketing and he told Eddie and Len to come up and meet him in Dearborn. The team was testing at Pocono Raceway in Pocono, PA, at the time but they immediately hopped on a flight bound for Detroit four hours after that initial conversation.
“We had t-shirts, jeans and tennis shoes on, but when we got there, we found out that something called Mr. Farley out of town at the last second. So, we decided to go buy clothes,” chuckled Eddie Wood. “When we went to Ford World Headquarters and told him what was going on and what we thought we needed he said, ‘OK, it starts now.’”
The plan involved increased engineering support and a switch to running part-time as opposed to trying to qualify for all 36 points races. The team continued communicating with Farley and other Ford officials until it got to the point that three years later, they were celebrating a win in the 2011 Daytona 500 with 20-year-old Trevor Bayne.
“We went from almost being out of business because we couldn’t make races, to winning the biggest race of the year,” said Wood, whose team began running the full schedule again in 2016. “That just shows what kind of commitment that Ford Motor Company has always had.”
Berry, who is in his first season behind the wheel for the team and second overall as a full-time driver in NASCAR’s top series, has already made it a memorable year after winning at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 16. That represented his first career Cup win.
“We put in a lot of work over the offseason to be prepared when the season started and I feel like that obviously paid off,” said Berry, who grew up in Hendersonville, TN. “Honestly, our results and performance has exceeded our expectations, so I’m super happy with that and winning a race in the Cup Series is a big deal.”
