50 Years Ago, David Pearson Started an Incredible NASCAR Journey with Wood Brothers

It was the start of something big. Very big.

Fifty years ago, David Pearson buckled into the Wood Brothers No. 21 Mercury at Darlington Raceway for the first time. The Woods had chosen Pearson to replace A.J. Foyt, who had decided to concentrate on his IndyCar program.

Pearson was 37 years old and had won only three races over the previous two seasons. He had won the Cup championship in 1966, 1968 and 1969 and had won 11 races in 1969, but some pundits predicted that his best years were over.

They were wrong, and in a very big way.

Pearson was the star of the show—of the entire weekend, in fact—in that first race at Darlington April 16, 1972. He babied the car in practice—a typical Pearson ploy, but then won the pole with a speed of 148.209 mph. He led 202 of the race’s 293 laps, including the final 93, and was the only driver on the lead lap at the finish. Richard Petty was a lap down in second place.

Pearson and the Woods, running a partial Cup schedule, won six races that year, but that was simply a prelude to 1973, when the No. 21 finished first in 11 of 18 races, dominating the circuit’s big tracks.

The pairing became one of the greatest in the history of the sport. The great mystery was why they hadn’t gotten together earlier.

“We hit it right off the first race,” crew chief Leonard Wood said of Pearson. “His style just fit ours. He just knew how to enter a corner and exit a corner. You can teach drivers how to do things and make good drivers out of them. Guys can be taught. But the guys who have a little edge on you are the ones who were born with something the others don’t have. He had that.”

Pearson and Wood worked well together, and Wood said part of that magic was knowing when to talk and when to shut up.