NASCAR WCUP: Wood Brothers, Sadler enjoying success of 2001
Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
April 4, 2001The Wood Brothers have 97 career NASCAR Winston Cup victories and have earned the distinction of being one of the sport's most respected teams. Glen, Eddie and Len Wood, owners of the No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus, along with driver Elliott Sadler were this week's guests on the weekly NASCAR Winston Cup teleconference. They spoke about running at Martinsville Speedway this weekend, which is just a short drive from the team's race shop in Stuart, Va., and about their win two weeks ago at Bristol.
ELLIOTT SADLER --21-- Motorcraft Taurus -- YOU WERE 24TH IN POINTS LAST YEAR AND THIS YEAR LOOKS EVEN BETTER. "We're hoping so. We've definitely gotten off to a great start. We've had terrible starts in the past and felt like we were working out of a hole the entire year, but we've got a good start and, hopefully, we'll be able to keep it going in the right direction."
WHAT IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO TURN THIS TEAM AROUND? "I think it's our sponsorship. Motorcraft came on board and really stood behind us 100 percent over the winter. They wanted to come in on the ground floor with a sub-par team, I guess you could say, and give us the backing and the resources that we need to become a top-notch team and I think they've done that. They've stood hand-in-hand and beside us and given us everything we need to better ourselves. They've really stood by their word and it's paid off. We feel a lot better. We're definitely running a lot better and we're more confident about the things that we're doing."
HOW HAVE YOU AND PAT WORKED SO WELL SO QUICKLY? "Pat and I are just 100 percent competitors. He's a racer, period. That's why I enjoy working him. He's into it. He runs every single lap with me and he's just a huge competitor. We just gel pretty good. We've got the same beliefs. We believe in the same things to fix the car or help it and that pays pretty big dividends. It's just really neat working with people that are racers. It's worked out great for us. I think we're both enjoying our company. We know we can pal around with each other, but when it comes time to business we get down to business too, so we know how to separate it and it's working good for us."
ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT MARTINSVILLE? "Yeah. We haven't run exactly how we've wanted to in the past, but it is close to home. It is pretty much home for the Wood Brothers. I know how much they enjoy going. We'll just see what happens. We tested there a couple of weeks ago and Pat and I really felt like we came up with a package that we're gonna be pretty happy with when we go back and we just want to keep the ball rolling. We've run very well every single weekend, except Atlanta, and we know how to fix that problem. We just want to keep that string going, so we'll see what happens. It's here close to home so we want to do the right thing and, hopefully, we'll be able to do that."
HOW DID YOU MAINTAIN YOUR CONFIDENCE THE FIRST TWO YEARS IN WINSTON CUP? "I'm not gonna tell you that there weren't a lot of nights when I sat staring at a mirror wondering if I was the right person for the job or if I was doing the right things to be a Winston Cup driver. I felt like I could always drive a Busch car or a Late Model and I was always able to win in everything I drove. It's just that Winston Cup is a different world. I mean, everybody is a champion and everybody's got their stuff together when you get there. I'm not gonna tell you it didn't hurt my feelings or I felt bad that some of the guys I was out-running in Busch or running with were coming into Winston Cup and just killing me and really out-running us bad every week. It was tough. Last winter, the Wood Brothers could have gotten rid of me easily, but they kept their faith in me and thought I could drive. We made a few changes within the company -- with the crew chief, the car chief, the shock specialist and the engineers. We've really redesigned our whole race team and I think it's showing a lot better. I feel more comfortable each and every week, and I feel like I'm accepted now probably more than I ever have been. I think winning that race did more for everybody's spirit and confidence more than anything. Maybe I can get back to where I was in the Busch Series. That's my dream. I'm still only 25 years old. There are still a lot of guys out there older than I am, so I still feel like I've got a long ways to go as far as maturity in the race car, so, hopefully, we'll be able to do that."
DID YOU EVER THINK YOU JUMPED TO WINSTON CUP TOO EARLY BECAUSE YOU WERE ONLY 23 AT THE TIME? "Yeah. That's something, especially after my first year when I saw how hard it was. I thought, 'Did I jump too early?' At the time I'd say, 'Yeah, I probably did jump too early.' But now, I don't know. My biggest fear was that I didn't want to be a guy that was labeled a Busch driver, that that's all he's gonna be his whole life and be stuck in the Busch Series. My dream as a kid was coming into the Winston Cup Series and I had a chance to be with a team that had a lot of stability in it. The owners had a lot of family involved in the team and there's not much of a revolving door at the Wood Brothers' shop, so I had a chance to be with a team with a lot of stability. I think at my age that's something I needed, so that's why I took the chance. I probably was too young, but going to a single-car team I didn't have a teammate to lean on, so it probably took my learning curve a little bit longer than it would other people, but that's a chance we all have to take. I was young. I probably didn't make the smartest decision, but I felt like it was the right one for me at the time."
WHAT IS IT THAT'S DIFFICULT ABOUT MARTINSVILLE? "Man, that's a really good question. I don't know. I think in the past, myself mainly included, is that we've tried to re-invent the wheel because it's such a flat track and we felt like we had to run up all this tricked up stuff to make the car turn and things like that. A lot of the blame has to go to me because I just didn't know any better. We went and tested there with normal stuff and the thing we've really done this year that I think has helped this race team is that we've just run normal basic stuff and it's made our team better. I know how my car is gonna feel each and every week and we actually run pretty good. That's not saying we're gonna go sit on the pole when we go up there this weekend at Martinsville, but I think we're gonna be a lot more competitive than we ever have been because we've gotten back to the basics. A lot of it is me with track time. I didn't ever get to race there in a Busch car, so that hurt and it's taken me a while to adapt to what I need. It's the same thing when we go to Pocono or Sears Point -- places I didn't run in a Busch car -- it just takes a little bit longer to get used to and knowing what I need to be competitive. Hopefully, we've kind of hit up on something and we'll be a lot better this year."
HAVE THE TIRES BEEN A FACTOR IN ALL OF THE NEW WINNERS THIS YEAR? "I think that the new Goodyear radials are the reason why 100 percent. I've said that for a while now and I'm gonna keep standing by it. I think a lot of these older teams and drivers that have been together a long time cannot use their notes like they used to because the tires are so much different. I think it gives these new teams and new drives with new situations a better chance to win or run good and my hat's off to Goodyear for that. I think they've done a great job and I think fans like seeing new drivers and getting new heroes to pull for. I think it's pretty neat and I think you're gonna see a couple of more first-time winners this year. There are a lot of guys who have been looking good that it looks like any weekend is gonna be their weekend."
ARE YOU SUPERSTITIOUS AT ALL AND DID YOU DO ANYTHING BEFORE BRISTOL? "Well, when I started racing go-karts at seven years old, my dad used to put a quarter in my seat heads-up and I'd use to sit on it for superstition. We never really did anything else and I kind of got away from it, but this year I've gotten some coins from the U.S. Air Force, which is an association sponsor of ours. They give out coins to everybody when they meet them and I've tried to hold on to some of them. Well, I sat on one at Bristol -- a coin that a Four-Star General gave me and it worked. I went to victory lane. That happened to me in the Busch Series there also where a guy gave me a coin and I went to victory lane at Bristol. Now I don't know if it's something about Bristol and coins or everywhere, but I've been using a coin pretty much all year. That special coin I got at Bristol, I'm keeping that one. I've switched over to using that one for the rest of this year, so I'm gonna use that. It probably doesn't have a hill of beans to do with how you run, but it feels right and I'm gonna ride that horse as long as I can. Each General or Colonel or department in the Air Force has a coin made with their logo on it, or who they are and it's just something that the Air Force does. He's a Four-Star General, so it's his coin. His name is Lester Lyles and this is his coin. That's what we're gonna stay with right now."
DID YOUR EGO GET DAMAGED WHEN TONY STEWART STARTED WINNING AS A ROOKIE? "It hurt my feelings a lot. It was like, 'Wow, he has stepped in and is doing such a great job and winning.' Yeah, he had great equipment but he wasn't wrecking or anything. He was running up front and doing the things you're supposed to do as a race car driver. It kind of put me in my place. It was like, 'Well, I've got to do a lot more homework than I thought I did.' I thought I was gonna be in better shape as a driver or know what to expect than where I was, so, yeah, it kind of hurt what I was trying to do and made me go back home and regroup. Then in my sophomore year everything I touched went the wrong way. I guess I was trying too hard and driving way over my head and just not doing the right things, so the older I get -- and I think I'm maturing a lot more. I know Tony is a lot older than I am and that probably helped him. I just was not old enough or mature enough to know what I was supposed to be doing and it put me in a bind."
WHAT ARE THE GREATEST LESSON EDDIE AND LEN WOOD HAVE TAUGHT YOU? "Racing for them is, for one, they are just so nice to everybody. They treat everybody great and they don't burn any bridges. I think that's because they've been in racing so long, they know something will probably come back around to get you if you do. They really taught me that and just being able to race for pure racers -- 100 percent. This is their life, their family. This is what they're all about. This is not a hobby. It's just taught me a lot as a person off the race track and the way you should be and how gentlemanly you should be to everybody and the way you should treat them. I hear drivers fussing all the time about car owners, that they're not doing this right or that right. They're having problems, but not once have we had any problem. They have given me more than my share on a lot of things. On a lot of things I've argued with them going, 'No, I don't want that. Ya'll keep it. Ya'll need it.' It's just great being able to race for car owners like that."
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE TALLADEGA RULES? "Talladega is gonna be a tough race. With the rules we have now, we have to be perfect for four hours with no mistakes or anything like that. We have to be perfect in every way and that's tough to ask 43 drivers to do that. But, on the other hand, we know we want to put on a good show for those fans because we want them to keep coming back. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here. Right now we know as drivers, and NASCAR knows, that this is the best performance package that we've got. This is what we have to work with right now until somebody comes up with a better idea, and I don't think right now anybody has come up with a better idea than what we've got. I heard Dale Jarrett talking last night on one of the shows that he liked the older package because it spreads the cars out a little more and stuff like that, and the guys using the draft to their advantage would help them more, and that's right but that's probably still not the answer. I think this is what we've got to work with. Until an answer comes along, then this is what we're gonna have to do. When we went to the Daytona 500 in 2000 it wasn't much of a race. The fans didn't like it, the drivers -- everybody fussed about competition level -- so NASCAR fixed it and really gave us a competition level that everybody is gonna like so that's what we have to work with and that's what we've got to work with. I do think that each driver, in his own right, has felt like they can do everything possible from a safety standpoint to feel 100 percent safe inside their race cars -- as safe as they can be. They've done the things they needed to do, whether it be the Hutchins Device or these pads -- anything inside your car to make you feel safe."
WHAT IS YOUR THOUGHT ABOUT THE RACING BEING AS TIGHT AS IT IS ON THE SUPERSPEEDWAYS? "It's tough, but I don't think you need to take the restrictor plate off and make us run 230 miles an hour. When they were talking about building motors to take compression out of them and run without restrictor plates, that way would probably be a good idea. But we'll just have to wait and see until and answer comes along. I think it's easier to run three and four-wide at Talladega because everybody knows the track is so much wider. It's tough at Daytona because the track is that much narrower, but we'll just have to wait and see. We don't want to sacrifice too much racing competition-wise for that, but safety is still the number one issue. We'll just have to see what happens, play the cards we're dealt, and just do the best we can with them."
HAVE YOU BEEN DELUGED WITH BOLGNA SANDWICHES SINCE BRISTOL? "I tell you what, that's kind of funny. I set that record in 1992 at South Boston Speedway between the hours of like four and 10. I ate 16 bologna burgers and they were all with onions and mustard and stuff like that. I was a crew member for my brother, but I guess I wasn't doing much work on the car because I was eating bologna burgers. That question has been raised many times since then and that's pretty neat. I am going back to South Boston Speedway this Saturday night to watch my cousin, Owen Miller, race so I'll definitely have me a bologna burger or two or three." HOW ABOUT 17? "I can't eat like that anymore. I think when I was young I had a wooden leg or something and didn't gain any weight. Right now, I can't eat that much. I'd be sick, especially if I've got to race Sunday. I'll just have a few to get the old taste back, but that's all. It's pretty neat to be known as the record holder for bologna burgers. That's a special treat."
GLEN WOOD, Co-Owner -- 21 Motorcraft Taurus -- WHEN DID YOU DECIDE THAT RACING WAS GOING TO BE THE WAY THE FAMILY MADE ITS LIVING AND DID YOU EVER THINK YOU'D BE DOING IT IN THE 21ST CENTURY? "That's sort of far out to even think you might do that. I guess back in the fifties and sixties, maybe, was when we sort of decided to go full time. I owned a sawmill along the same time in the fifties and I began to make more money racing than I was in the sawmill, so I decided I'd better take the one I made the most money with to feed my kids. Fifty years ago seems like a lifetime ago and things have changed so much since then it's hard to believe. I never dreamed that this would ever come to this, but it's great to see that it has."
EDDIE WOOD, Co-Owner --21 Motorcraft Taurus -- I BET STUART, VIRGINIA WAS PRETTY EXCITED LAST WEEK. "It really was. Len and I didn't get home until about 11:15 or close to midnight on Sunday night and there were still people at our shop. There were signs and sheets with 21 and that kind of thing all over the building. Somebody even rolled my house with toilet paper, so it was a pretty big deal."
YOU RAN ONE OF YOUR OLD CARS LAST WEEK. DO YOU PLAN ON DOING THAT AGAIN OR GO BACK TO ROUSH CARS? "Basically, all of our cars are the same. That one just happened to be one that we had built late last year. It was built like the Roush cars. It wasn't a copy, but basically everybody's chassis and things are almost identical. They've got some little things that are different like location of points and stuff like that for the geometry, but we've got about four cars that Elliott really, really likes so we'll just pick out the one we think best applies to each race track. We're going to Michigan and test Monday after Martinsville with one new Roush car and another Roush car we ran at Darlington and Rockingham. That's actually Elliott's favorite race car, but we're just running whatever it takes. It doesn't matter to us."
GLEN WOOD CONTINUED -- WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT A FRANCHISING SYSTEM? "I'm not sure how that franchising would work. That's a little far out for me to think of how it would. As far as I'm concerned, I don't do a lot for the team anymore. I give them morale support, but Len and Eddie and Leonard and Kim handle the biggest part of everything, so for me it wouldn't mean that much. But for the children I'd just like to see all of this continue. It's sort of sad to see Bud Moore and Junior Johnson drop out -- several of them have. It's kind of rewarding to know that we have been able to withstand all of the things that have happened and are still in business and having just won a race makes it so special."
EDDIE WOOD CONTINUED -- DOES THERE NEED TO BE SOME WAY TO PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF OWNERS LIKE YOURSELF? "I've heard a lot about franchising. People talk about it and owners in the garage, but there are a lot of things about franchising that -- it looks like it's a pretty good deal when you look at it on the outside, but then when you start checking into it you realize there's a lot more to it than that. We've gotten here and raced 51 years under NASCAR's leadership and, to me, you kind of dance with what you came to the dance with. That's the way I feel about it. If they feel like franchising is the thing to do, then that's what we'll do. We race. We do our business as best we can, but as far as things like that, we kind of leave that up to NASCAR. People criticize NASCAR for this and that, but you can't argue with the success they've had. The way they approach things, they don't make quick decisions and take the risk of making the wrong one. I'm sure they're working on this and, like I said, we just want to keep racing. By winning the race up at Bristol, that kind of meant that we can still do this job. We haven't forgotten how and Elliott Sadler can get the job done. It answers a lot of questions and put to rest a lot of things. We were able to pick up Motorcraft as our sponsor last summer. That, along with hiring Pat Tryson, has really turned our team around. They added extra funding to us that enabled us to do a lot of things we had never been able to do in the past with tunnel time and a lot of technology that we weren't really accustomed to using. We put all of that together and, all of a sudden, we win a race. Right now life is good. We're happy and just looking forward to going to Martinsville."
WHAT MADE YOU GO WITH ELLIOTT SADLER AS YOUR DRIVER? "At the time we were looking for another driver, the emphasis was on youth. We felt if we could get someone young and stick it out -- go through the ups and down and all the stuff you go through with change -- that we would be better off for it. We sat down and talked to Elliott and said we wanted to hire him. He was 23 years old at the time and we made a five-year deal at that point. We said, 'Okay, we're gonna stick with it and nobody is gonna give up. If we have trouble, we have trouble together. You don't blame us and we won't blame you. We'll stick it out and whenever we have trouble, we'll sit down and talk about it and look for a fix for it.' That's what we did. Last year, we had a pretty hard year, but nobody ever gave up. We sat down when we got Motorcraft and said, 'Okay, what do we need to do?' And we just made a list of things we needed to change. Some of the changes were hard. Some of the things we moved around and changed on the time with our personnel and all were hard decisions, but this is a business and when it comes down to you and you stopping the business, you've gotta make the changes and do whatever it takes. That's what we did and everything has just really worked out for us."
Text provided by Greg Shea
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