Daytona wouldn’t be Daytona for Wood Brothers Racing if team patriarch Glen Wood wasn’t sitting in front of the hauler holding court with the who’s who of NASCAR racing. Wood, 89, is attending his 69th consecutive race on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Starting in 1947 as a spectator to watch Curtis Turner drive, through driving to victory himself in the last three races run on the sand, to being the owner of a dominant team in the ’60s and ’70s, to being a proud father watching his sons follow in his footsteps, Wood hasn’t missed a February in Daytona since shortly after World War II. “The first trip down here in 1947, we came not knowing anything about the place,” Wood recalled. “It was just something off the wall to do. We heard about this big race by the ocean and we’d never heard of that. So we drove down here.” His memory as sharp as ever, Wood remembers the two wood-slat bridges that led from the mainland to Daytona Beach. “Once in a while you’d hit a slat and it would break,” he said with a chuckle. Rather than miles of high-rise hotels, he remembers small cabins and one-floor motels lining the Atlantic. The landscape wasn’t that much different in 1953 when he and his brother, Leonard, brought a Ford from Virginia to the beach for the first time. Leonard Wood, who at age 80 still is active with the race team, fondly recalls his brother’s wins on the beach. Len Wood, one of Glen’s two sons and a team co-owner, says his father’s attendance record at Daytona is important for team continuity. “For us, him being here 69 years in a row is part of our history, part of our tradition,” he said. “He’s a link back to earlier days when guys like Pearson, Foyt, Gurney and Yarborough drove for us. We brought the team (now comprised of several Team Penske personnel as a result of the technical alliance between the organizations) up to Stuart in January to give them a bit of a history lesson. Hopefully when they put on that 21 uniform they’ll think about the past and try to make Ryan Blaney the next big star.”(Wood Brothers Racing)(2-22-2015)
