Eddie Wood on Blaney's Pocono win: "This will last forever"

The team owner of NASCAR’s oldest racing operation failed to pick the winning numbers for the $447 million Saturday drawing.

But what the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team won with Ryan Blaney at Pocono Raceway on Sunday was priceless.

“Yeah, this is way better,” Wood told Motorsport.com. “This will last forever. Every win you get is very, very special, and especially when you get like Ryan's first win, and we've had a number of kids that come through our car that won their first race in our car.  

“Dale Jarrett did, Kyle (Petty) did, and to be part of that, that now he's ‑‑ we can always say he won his first race with us, and it'll always be that way.”

The entire afternoon evoked memories from the Wood Brothers’ golden years from patriarch Glen Wood’s days behind the wheel and other Hall of Famers such as Curtis Turner, Junior Johnson, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, AJ Foyt and Dale Jarrett. 

And Eddie Wood has been around for most of the company’s 1,488 starts. 

A memorable day

Blaney, 23, shares the Wood Brothers’ heritage. He’s a third-generation racer whose grandfather Lou, a champion in both sprints and modifieds, also relied on working in the family sawmill to support his racing. 

When the radio failed and Blaney could not transmit what the car needed, he team went old school with hand signals for adjustments. Around lap 40, crew chief Jeremy Bullins told his driver, “If you're still loose, put your hand on the roof.” 

For Wood, the comparisons didn’t stop there. As Kevin Harvick stalked Blaney in the closing laps of Sunday’s race, he was reminded of another Pocono win where Neil Bonnett held off Buddy Baker by 0.6 seconds. Blaney’s advantage over Harvick was 0.139-seconds.

“It was a great day, and like the radio thing, and I mean, it was just like us going back to the old days with no radios,” Wood said. “You asked about which it was; we used to have a piece of gray tape on the dash that would have roof loose, door push, and that's what you went by.  

“It just kind of took me back, and then right there at the end, the way he was trying to get away from Harvick and dropping down to the inside like that, Neil Bonnett did that in 1980 here, and went on to win the race. I don't know, it was just like I had flashbacks. It was really cool.”

Old school

The Wood Brothers are the epitome of cool. Rather than a raucous celebration, Eddie and Len enjoyed a quiet dinner at Steak-n-Shake after their plane landed in Statesville, N.C. While the location was different, it’s the same iconic black-and-white hamburger joint where they savored their last win — the 2011 Daytona 500 with Trevor Bayne.

Although Blaney elected to party with his contemporaries after the race, he fits right in with the Wood Brother’s old-school philosophy. From his retro driving suit and unruly locks, Blaney could have seamlessly fit into any of the Wood’s seven decades in NASCAR. After just two seasons with team, the driver’s respect and affection for the Woods were unmistakable. 

Blaney's future

When Blaney was asked about his status next season amid rumors that the Team Penske protege will return to the Captain’s camp, he truthfully replied, “I like where I'm at.” 

While the decision likely won’t be Blaney’s to make, Eddie Wood wasn’t thinking beyond the moment.

“I’m not going to worry about that today,” Wood said. “Our relationship with Mr. Penske goes back to the early '70s. We actually met Roger in Riverside, California, the first race he showed up that we were there in '72 or '73 with Mark Donohue and a Matador, and they won that race, and we were parked beside those guys, and in those days we all wore white rental clothes, white shirt, white pants. Everybody did.      

“Well, when the Penske crowd showed up, they had black pants and they had these white shirts with these things on the top. I don't know what they were. They were epaulets. I had never seen one, and I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever saw, and they all had their shirt tails tucked and they were all proper, and we looked like a bunch from no‑telling‑where. But at that point, we just made a friendship.”

That friendship — along with the partnership the family has enjoyed with Ford Motor Company since the 1950s — has endured  through the years. And for the first time in the team’s history, the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford will qualify for NASCAR’s playoffs come September.

“When this opportunity came to team up with Jeremy (crew chief Bullins) and Ryan, it just all kind of fell into place, and a lot of people were involved in making all that happen. Our good friend Edsel Ford, he was part of that with Mr. Penske, and just things really happened. It's just a great relationship. I mean, as the results show.

“Everyone treats us like family over there. The people that work over there that Len and I raced against in the early '70s, they're still there. Like no one leaves. You go to work for Mr. Penske, you don't leave. You don't want to. That's just the kind of group they are, and we just love our relationship with them.”