Stuck on 99: Wood Brothers Looks at Every NASCAR Race as 'Another Opportunity to Win'

• Ryan Blaney notched win No. 99 for Wood Brothers Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series—that was four drivers, 209 races, and almost six years ago.

• There’s nothing to suggest it will end anytime soon with Cup newcomer Harrison Burton.

• Or maybe it will.

They’ve been a beloved Virginia institution for 73 years, so it was altogether fitting that Governor Glenn Youngkin proclaimed April 2 as "Wood Brothers Racing Day" in the Commonwealth.

Alas, the pre-race ceremony at Richmond Raceway might have been the company’s highlight moment since Ryan Blaney delivered its 99th Cup Series victory at Pocono in 2017.

That was four drivers, 209 races, and almost six years ago, something of a lifetime for the family-owned, single-car, Ford-based, No. 21 team that once thrived with such luminaries as Cale Yarborough, A.J. Foyt, Buddy Baker, Dan Gurney, Neil Bonnett, and the incomparable David Pearson. The losing streak is depressing enough, but there’s nothing to suggest it will end anytime soon with Cup newcomer Harrison Burton.

Or maybe it will.

After all, the team was winless with eight drivers in 298 races between Elliott Sadler at Bristol in March of 2001 and Trevor Bayne at Daytona Beach in February of 2011. It was then 131 more losses over six seasons before Blaney won at Pocono. (After running a limited schedule for several years, the team went full-time in 2016 with Blaney as part of Team Penske’s developmental program).

“We’ve been there before, not winning like we once did,” team president Eddie Wood said during Martinsville week. “We didn’t have any idea Trevor was going to win the 500, but it worked out for us. And I don’t think we expected Blaney—running on older tires—could hold off Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick at the end in Pocono. But that worked out for us, too.

“I don’t look at it as ‘we’ll never win again.’ It’s like with ballplayers or any other kind of athlete: each game is another opportunity to win. Each weekend is another chance to win. Every race is another chance for something good to happen. You put last night’s game or last weekend’s race behind you and look ahead; you keep looking at the sunshine. Yeah, it’s harder to win now than ever, but it’s out there available ever weekend and we’re working hard to win again.”

The multi-car juggernaut of Hendrick Motorsports leads all organizations with 294 all-time Cup victories. Petty Enterprises is credited with 268, Joe Gibbs Racing with 201 (including last weekend with Christopher Bell on Bristol’s dirt), Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing with 138 victories, Team Penske with 136, Junior Johnson and Associates with 132, and Richard Childress Racing with 114. Hendrick, Gibbs, RFK, Penske, RCR, and the Woods are active going into this weekend’s 400-lap race at the half-mile Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, 30 miles east of the Woods’ hometown of Stuart. Yarborough won for the Woods at the flat, half-mile bullring in 1968 and Pearson won for them in 1973.

Owners with deeper pockets, massive technical resources, research and development assets, and willing sponsors rule stock car racing. Back in the day, when on-track success came mostly from hard work, ingenuity, and mechanical wizardry, the Woods were as good as anyone and better than most. But somewhere along the way the little team nestled away in the Virginia foothills lost its edge. Even so, its 10-year technical alliance with Team Penske has helped in every way.

“They treat us like family,” Wood said, “just like one of their own teams. They couldn’t be more helpful, more open-book, more accommodating in every way. Whatever we need, they’re right there to help us. We might not even be racing today if it wasn’t for Team Penske and the people at Motorcraft and Ford Performance. Mr. (Edsel) Ford and Mr. (Jim) Farley at Ford are great friends and have always supported us.”

Still, beating three dozen other stock car teams for upwards of 600 miles on 36 weekends from February through November remains one of the toughest tasks in motorsport.

“People not in racing—people on the outside—don’t know how hard it is to win one of these things,” Wood said. “However hard they think it is, it’s two or three times harder than that. There’s always somebody good you’ve got to beat, whether it’s the Petty crowd or Junior Johnson or Hendrick or Bobby Allison. And back in the day it was Holman-Moody.

“Even when we had Pearson (43 victories between 1972-1979), we never went to a race knowing we were going to win. We went thinking that if everything went like it should and we didn’t have any problems, we had a shot. Even back then, it was never as easy as it looked. The depth of competition is so much deeper now, but the opportunity is still there every weekend. You just have to work through things, especially with younger drivers like the ones we’ve had the past few years. We just have to keep working at it.”

The governor’s proclamation was nice, but getting to 100 victories will be even nicer. Perhaps surprisingly, the team isn’t obsessed by the number, so you won’t find anyone hauling “WOOD BROTHERS’ 100th VICTORY” hats or tee-shirts to each track.

The nine-paragraph presentation from Gov. Youngkin outlined the team’s founding in 1950, when family patriarch the late Glenn Wood (later shortened to a single N) began racing. He went from driver to owner in 1965, building a small, dedicated, “shade-tree” team that eventually featured many of the sport’s greatest drivers. The Woods have won in seven decades, most recently with Bayne in 2011 and Blaney in 2017. Since then, Paul Menard (2018-2019), Matt DiBenedetto (2020-21), and Burton (2022-current) have gone 0-for-188.

The governor’s document tells how Glen(n) Wood recruited family members to help maintain his cars and be his crew. His youngest brother and chief mechanic, Leonard, has been with the team from the beginning. Glenn’s children—Len, Eddie, and Kim Wood Hall—took ownership roles in the late 1980s and third-generation family members Jon, Keven, and Jordan Wood Hicks are now part of the ownership group. The team has been headquartered in Virginia since its founding—its museum in Stuart is a must-see attraction—and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest active NASCAR team

Finally, the Governor read: “The Commonwealth of Virginia is proud to honor Wood Brothers Racing’s significant contributions to stock car racing and to our Commonwealth and nation by recognizing April 2 as Wood Brothers Racing Day.”

Richly deserved, to be sure. Just as No. 100 will also be richly deserved. And it’s a lock that nobody in the garage or along pit road that day will begrudge the Wood their long-awaited special moment.