Bill Elliott

When a driver and team qualifies 34th in NASCAR’s highly competitive Sprint Cup Series, the smart money says to manage the expectations and seek glory some other day. But when the green flag dropped to start the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, hometown favorite Bill Elliott and the crew of his Wood Brothers No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion came out swinging, with chassis changes by the crew and some determined driving by Elliott, a native of the north Georgia town of Dawsonville.
The David Hyder-led crew used several early pit stops to tune on the car, and they hit on a set-up that allowed Elliott to begin climbing through the field. Just after the 300-mile mark, the team was getting some quality TV time on FOX, and it wasn’t for old-times sake. It was due to hard work on pit road and hustle behind the wheel as Elliott worked his way into the top 15 and even into the lead at Lap 215 before surrendering the top spot to make a pit stop.
The Woods then reached into their bag of tricks and tried to pull one of their proven Atlanta strategies and stretch their fuel mileage late in the race. But numerous late cautions foiled that plan. “We were in position to make one less stop than everybody else, but it didn’t work out,” said team co-owner Len Wood, one of the most respected fuel mileage strategists on pit road.
With the fuel strategy plan no longer an option, the Woods and Elliott returned to a more conventional strategy, one that was good enough to allow them to overcome a lap-losing penalty on a pit stop. At Lap 273 of a scheduled 325, sitting in 29th position, two laps behind the leader, the day appeared to be essentially over for the famed No. 21. The smart money would say it was, but Elliott and the team had other ideas.
Using the wave-around rule and some heads-up driving, Elliott got the car back on the lead lap, even though he was often at a disadvantage, tire-wear wise, to the drivers he was racing. By the time a crash between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski set up the first of two green-white-checkered flag restarts, Elliott had made his way to 23rd, on the lead lap.
As the lead pack raced through Turns 3 and 4 on the first restart, a multi-car melee began unfolding just ahead of Elliott and his No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion. The ol’ cat behind the wheel showed he still had some pretty quick reflexes, and he steered his way through the smoke and grinding metal to line up 14th for the final restart. But Elliott found himself at a disadvantage to drivers behind him who had fresher tires, a huge advantage on an abrasive track like AMS, and he lost two spots at the end. He crossed the finish line challenging pole-sitter Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a top-15 finish but had to settle for a 16th, his best of the young season. It was his second straight strong effort – and second straight 16th-place run, going back to Homestead last fall – on an intermediate track, the size facility that makes up the bulk of the team’s limited schedule.
“I was tickled to death after what we went through,” Elliott said in the garage Sunday night at AMS, standing in sight of a grandstand that bears his name. “We had a penalty on pit road, and then it was just one thing after another. The car was pretty tight and we fought that…. “It was just one of those days, but it turned out.”
The No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion returns to the track on April 18 for the Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Bill Elliott and the crew of the # 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion couldn’t be blamed if they took it easy during Friday night qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The team had struggled in practice and made lots of changes to the car after practice. The outcome of their qualifying lap on a cold, crisp night was far from predictable.
Then, just before Elliott took his turn on the clock, Bobby Labonte, a former series champion, qualified on time. At that point, Elliott was in the race no matter how he ran because he was then eligible for a past-champion’s provisional starting spot. But the Woods and Elliott came to race, so once Elliott fired up the #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, he gave it everything he had.
He found the speed to make the race without having to resort to the provisional, a victory in itself on a potentially disappointing day. To do so, he picked up 6/10 of a second over his best lap in practice, a difference in running 185 miles per hour and 189. It was about the same pick-up that Dale Earnhardt Jr. needed to win the pole for Sunday’s race.
“I don’t think anybody else picked up that much,” said Wood Brothers team co-owner Eddie Wood. “That’s a big credit to [crew chief] David Hyder and the crew and to Bill,” he said. “Bill knew when he left pit road that he was in the show, but he still ran that hard.”
Elliott will start 34th in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500, but now that the team is in the race, the crew can focus on a more conventional set-up for running 500 miles. “We’ll go back to something close to what we’ve run here before,” Wood said.
After the red # 21 was back in its pit stall and put away for the night, Wood and Hyder went trackside and took in a NASCAR Modified race on the quarter-mile oval on the frontstretch at AMS. It was a welcome respite from a tense, stressful day at the track. Stressful days are something the Woods and Hyder deal with regularly while running a limited schedule without the luxury of a guaranteed starting spot. “It’s like this every week,” Wood said. “It’s no different than Daytona. We were fast at Daytona, but we still had to sweat it out. “Here at Atlanta, we struggled a little bit, but fortunately we were able to get in the race on time and not have to use a provisional.”
As a bonus, the Modified race was a barn-burner, a throwback to the old days of racing at places like Bowman-Gray Stadium, where team founder Glen Wood, Eddie’s father, once ruled the roost. A day that had been filled with anxiety ended with the satisfaction of a gutsy qualifying effort by the 54-year-old Bill Elliott and a door-to-door Modified finish as 19-year-old Corey Lajoie beat veteran Tim Brown in the 150-lap feature.
Now it’s on to Sunday, and a race at a track where the Woods are the all-time win leaders with 12 and where Elliott is the hometown favorite. The Kobalt Tools 500 is set to get the green flag at 1 p.m. with TV coverage on FOX and radio coverage by PRN.

NASCAR legend Bill Elliott will compete in a Thunder Roadsters race on Atlanta Motor Speedway’s quarter-mile “Thunder Ring” following Saturday’s E-Z-GO 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.

Elliott, who will also compete in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 and has five-career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series wins in Atlanta, previously won his only appearance on the “Thunder Ring” in a Thunder Roadster.

The Legends races will immediately follow the conclusion of the E-Z-GO 200 scheduled for 2:00 p.m.

In addition to Elliott, three-time Thursday Thunder champion and current ARCA competitor Casey Roderick will compete against Elliott in the event. Roderick currently competes for the Bill Elliott Racing Team. Roderick will compete in a Roadster owned and usually driven by Atlanta Motor Speedway president Ed Clark.

Also Legends competitor and Driver Development Protege Trey Poole will be on hand to compete in the dual driving a Thunder Roadster usually wheeled by Russ Sutton of Monolith Hospitality. The action between Elliott and two of his driver development drivers should prove rather interesting to say the least.

The Legends races will mark the final date of Atlanta Motor Speedway’s Winter Flurry race series.

Bill Elliott and the new Ford FR9 engine will be back in the field at Atlanta this weekend…
After skipping NASCAR’s short West Coast swing, Wood Brothers Racing and driver Bill Elliott will return to the Sprint Cup fray this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Elliott, of course, is a hero in his native Georgia, where he earned the nickname “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” for some of his exploits in the 1980s, which including winning a Sprint Cup championship and the old “Winston Million.”

Just as they did last year, the Wood Brothers are only running a partial Sprint Cup schedule. But in each of the races they run, Elliott’s iconic No. 21 Ford Fusion will powered by the new FR9 Ford engine.

The FR9’s main claim to fame is not additional horsepower — these days, NASCAR keeps teams in such a tight mechanical box that no manufacturer can get a meaningful horsepower advantage. But what it does have is a lower center of gravity and an improved cooling system, both of which should contribute to better handling on the track.

All the other Fords at Atlanta — four cars each from Roush Fenway Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports, plus three more from Front Row Motorsports with Yates Racing and one from Latitude 43 Motorsports — will be powered by the old Ford engine, code-named “452.”

Sunday’s race will mark only the second event for the FR9 at a non-restrictor plate track. David Ragan ran it successfully in 2009’s season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

By the second half of 2010, the plan is for all the Ford teams to use the new engine. But for now, it’s just the Wood Brothers, who will use it in every race this season. And that arrangement seems to please everyone involved.

“With us running a limited schedule, in the unlikely event something goes wrong, it doesn’t kill us in the points because we’re not really worried about points,” said Len Wood, co-owner of the Wood Brothers team.

For Ford, having the Wood Brothers willing to run the new engine gives the automaker critically needed real-world testing. “They can run them on the endurance dyno all they want, but until you put that thing on the race track under the real deal with tear offs flying around and getting on your grille and heating it up more than you want, or with pit stops where it gets over-revved here or there, it’s never the real deal until you’re really out there,” said Wood.

It also gives Ford the luxury of a gradual engine roll-out schedule — and the other teams the ability to spread out the cost involved.

“There are a couple of reasons for the slow rollout. The first reason is you’ve got to get your race package complete,” said David Simon, a Ford engineer who worked closely with Doug Yates to develop the new engine. “You can’t go out there with an engine that isn’t fully developed, not at this level.”

Besides that, the current engine makes plenty of power as is.

“The old “452” engine, compared to the other engines out there, is really competitive,” said Simon. “I mean, it’s not just hanging on because it’s old, it’s really competitive so we haven’t been under a lot of pressure to roll the new engine out early. With that said, the new engine is at a point where we’re very confident in it.”

Still finalizing the details on the engine requires track time.

“We didn’t want to do development on the race track and continuously be changing it while being under the pressure of racing it,” said Simon. “The other reason is that once you get the package set, you’ve got to get the entire pipeline going. The engine shop has a lot of parts they need to make, and we have parts to supply, so if you do that before your race package is set, you run the risk of having to change things and ending up with a lot of scrap parts. We didn’t want to be in that situation, so that’s why the rollout of this open engine is gonna be a little bit slower.”

Logistics clearly play a factor as well.

“It’s not just as simple as changing out the old engine for the new engine in an hour,” said Wood. “There are different motor mounts in the car for the FR9 and it requires the cable drive fuel pump, which we had never used before until Daytona. The headers are different and some of the radiator connectors are different, so there was a changeover period we went through to get ready.”

With that in mind, the Wood Brothers team is ready for Atlanta.

“I’m excited about it,” said Wood. “We’ve talked about it for over a year now and the time has come to move to the future. … We’re taking a car that we built last fall for Homestead and qualified in the top 10 (ninth) and then we had a pretty decent run in the race and finished 16th. They’ve massaged on that car this winter and they’re building another one just like that to go to Texas, and I actually think it will run at the Charlotte test March 23 and 24.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

To truly understand how special it is for Bill Elliott to drive the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as he’ll do this weekend in the Kobalt Tools 500, it helps to know about one of his first-ever trips to his home track.
The year was 1973. Elliott was just a teenager. He went to the race with some high school friends from his hometown of Dawsonville, Ga. “We drove down there in a 1973 Ford Torino,” Elliott said, adding that the sporty ride came from his father’s small Ford dealership. “We parked in the infield. It was really muddy.” The boys watched a familiar scenario play out – David Pearson won the race in the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Mercury, one of the team’s league-leading 12 Cup victories at the track and one of their 11 superspeedway wins that season. Pearson and the Woods swept Atlanta that year.
So were young Elliott and his pals backing the winner that day? “Of course,” he said. “It was David Pearson. It was a Ford, and it was the Wood Brothers.” Soon Elliott was racing himself at AMS, starting out in Fords fielded by his father, the late George Elliott, a man who not only loved Fords but absolutely hated any other brand of automobile.
To date, Elliott has five wins and five poles at his home track. Throughout his Sprint Cup career, Elliott, from the north Georgia mountains, has been a crowd favorite at AMS. Many of his fans will watch Sunday’s race from the Elliott Grandstand, which was named for the popular driver and his family. “It’s always nice to race in front of the home folks,” Elliott said. “I’m fortunate to have a pretty good following there, and it’ll be good to be among them again.”
He said he also feels fortunate to be back behind the wheel of the same car he drove last fall in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In that race, he qualified ninth; fell back, then charged through the field late in the race to claim a strong 16th-place finish. Also in his favor is the fact that the Motorcraft/Quick Lane crew has spent the winter tuning the car and working on its overall downforce program, which is one of the main keys to running well on an intermediate track that makes up the bulk of the team’s limited 2010 schedule.
“It’s amazing what we accomplished last year, and I look forward to getting back to work and continuing to improve what we had,” Elliott said. Elliott also looks forward to tackling the aging, abrasive asphalt surface at AMS. “The track has a lot of character,” he said. “The asphalt’s getting some age on it, and you can run the top, or the middle or the bottom groove. “That makes for a good race for the fans, and for the teams and drivers it gives us the ability to do a lot of different stuff.”
Qualifying for the Kobalt Tools 500 is set for Friday at 6:10 p.m. The 500 will get the green flag on Sunday at 1 p.m., with live coverage on FOX.

Bill Elliott will race the new RF9 engine next week at Atlanta and all eight Roush Fenway and Richard Petty Motorsports cars will have the new engine in Talladega and the All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Allmendinger and the other Fords are currently using the old engine.

Manning Service Returns to Sponsor CRA Super Series Event

Winchester, IN (February 23, 2010) – Winchester Speedway officials have announced that NASCAR legend Bill Elliott and his 14 year old son Chase, will be meeting fans and signing autographs at the May 2nd season opener. Chase will be on hand to race in the Manning Service 100 CRA Super Series event that day, in preparation for the 39th Annual Winchester 400 in October. “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” will be on hand to spot for his son. Both Elliott’s will be available for fans prior to the feature events on May 2nd.

Born in 1995 into the Bill Elliott racing dynasty, Chase is already continuing the tradition of excellence in the sport where his father earned the legendary nickname “Million Dollar Bill.” At the age of fourteen, Chase already has seven championship titles to his name and is winning over a loyal fan base. The fourteen year old will be making his third start on the legendary High Banks of Winchester Speedway. Last year he competed with the CRA Super Series in the McGunegill Engine Performance 100 on Labor Day Weekend, finishing 15th, he then returned to compete in the Winchester 400 were he turned a lot of heads with an outstanding run until a wheel problem forced him to pit under green. He still managed to get an eighth place finish.

Racing legend Bill Elliott has built one of the most distinguished records in NASCAR Cup history. Throughout his career he has radiated a modest and friendly personality that has endeared him to race fans of all ages. From cutting up car bodies in the early days to winning NASCAR’s first million-dollar bonus, Bill Elliott has seen and done it all. Though quiet and unpretentious, this NASCAR Cup champion has been dazzling fans with his racing ability for an amazing three decades.

The 1988 NACAR Sprint Cup Champion still competes with the series racing for the legendary Wood Brothers Racing, the oldest continually operated Cup series team in NASCAR. The team will race selected events on the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule, they started at Daytona were Bill started fourth and finished 27th. Always a favorite of NASCAR’s fan base, Elliott was crowned “Most Popular Driver” 16 times, including 10 in a row from 1991-2000. Elliott is a two-time Daytona 500 Winner (1985 & 1988) and captured the prestigious Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the 2002 season.

Winchester Speedway is very happy to have Manning Service back as the sponsor of the season opening CRA Super Series event, which they have sponsored since the 2005 season.

“We are excited to be a sponsor with Winchester Speedway again in 2010,” remarked Jeff Manning, owner and operator of Manning Service. “We always look forward to our annual event at Winchester Speedway with the CRA Super Series. This track means a lot to the economy of this area, it has so much history and so many great drivers have raced here, I hope everyone will continue to support this great racing facility. ”

Merritt Manning, selling gas and performing mechanical repairs on cars, trucks and farm equipment, founded Manning Service, Inc., located in Saratoga, Indiana, in 1948. Today, Manning Service is renowned as a world leader in portable kerosene heaters, wicks and parts. Specializing in hard to find items and accessories, Manning Service has shipped products all over the world and is still continuing to grow. The Manning Service local retail store in Saratoga, offers patrons a variety of things from fresh Hunts Brothers Pizza to Mini-Storage Units. The business also features automotive, residential and commercial window tinting as well as custom automotive graphics and paint protection.

Manning Service started its involvement in Motorsports by owning there own racecar at the famed Eldora Speedway back in the 1950’s. They have also been involved in Go-Kart Racing and as a sponsor with Chuck Barnes Jr. with the CRA Super Series at Winchester Speedway in 2005, including his victory in the Labor Day World Stock Car Festival 100 lap CRA Super Series event that season and with 2009 Howe CRA Late Model Sportsman Series Champion Charlie Hanna in his races at Winchester Speedway the last two seasons. More information on Manning Service is available at www.manningservice.com.

The CRA Street Stocks and Vores Welding & Steel CRA FWD Compacts will also be racing that day. More information on Winchester Speedway is available on line at www.winchesterspeedway.com

Does the thought of watching a great car race make your heart accelerate? Do you live to enjoy the thrill of speed? Maybe you just appreciate the design of great sports cars. Whatever the case may be, you can be sure that somewhere along the line, you have heard about or seen some great and historic Ford race cars!

Automotive racing has been a very popular sport ever since the first automobiles were designed over 100 years ago. Actually, it was because of car racing that many of todays automakers exist. Automotive designers would try to create faster and more efficient vehicles by testing their ideas in races against other designers. Henry Ford entered one such event with his unique, early “Model T” design and won, investing the prize winnings into the company that would become the Ford Motor Company. From this humble beginning, many historic Ford race cars would be born.

Ford racing would become a company to contend with as they produced one winning design after another. Here are just some of the historic Ford race cars:

*In 1903, Barney Oldfield drove the Ford 999 to victory at the Indiana Fairgrounds, and set a new speed record of 60 mph.

*In 1909, the Ford Model T shows its endurance as it wins a cross-country race from New York to Seattle.

*In 1949, the first national NASCAR race was won by Ford driver Jim Roper in a new car model called the Lincoln.

In the 1960’s, Ford would reach the height of racing, as they would produce several cutting edge designs, including:

*In 1963, the Ford-Lotus design would win the Milwaukee 200, driven by Jim Clark.

*In 1964, Ford would introduce a new style of Indy car engine known as the DOHC V-8.

*In 1966, the Ford model Mark II’s would place 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the 24 hours of Lemans race.

*In 1967, Ford would introduce a new engine in the Dutch Grand Prix, called the Ford-Cosworth DFV V-8.

*In 1968, Ford would introduce a sporty design of its popular Ford Mustang by showcasing the Cobra Jet Mustang at the NRHA Winternationals, winning its first event.

The 1980’s would see a resurgence of the popular Ford Mustang as the Miller Mustang would win two races in 1981. Ford would also become competitive with the Thunderbird model as driver Bill Elliott would win a record 11 NASCAR races in 1985. In 1988, Bill Elliott would continue winning in the Ford Thunderbird by taking the NASCAR Winston Cup championship.

Ford continues to produce new and innovative ideas as they design cars for the future. In the early 2000’s, the Ford Taurus model challenged the field, being driven by the Rousch racing team including some of todays championship drivers like Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch. If the future is anything like the past, Ford will continue to produce many historic Ford race cars.

NASCAR’s past met the present on Sunday at Daytona as Glen Wood, who nearly won the first-ever stock car race on the famed superspeedway, waved the green flag to start the 52nd running of the Daytona 500, a race that included his current car, the #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion. Wood, 84, was honored along with his brother Leonard, who was the team’s chief mechanic and crew chief for decades, and his sons Eddie and Len, who steer the team’s efforts today.
Daytona International Speedway president Robin Braig said Glen Wood, who ran short of fuel just shy of the finish for the first ever Daytona 500 qualifying race in 1959, then won the race four times as a car owner, was the perfect person to drop the green flag. “The Wood Brothers are legends in NASCAR,” Braig said. “They have an important place in both the history of the Daytona 500 and NASCAR, and it’s an honor to have Glen Wood wave the green flag for our sport’s biggest race of the year.” But the Woods aren’t just faces from the past, they’re a big part of the sport today, and the Woods’ #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, driven by two-time Daytona 500 winner Bill Elliott, was on the move in the early portions of the race.
Elliott started 40th, but was up to 27th by Lap 25. He maintained a position in the giant two-wide lead pack for the majority of the race, running mostly in the outside line. “We were just trying to get in a fairly safe position in the lead draft and save our car for the end,” Eddie Wood said.
But those plans hit a bump in the road, literally. When the track surface in turns one and two began to come apart, opening what amounted to a pot hole; the #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion suffered damage to the right front, which included the all-important splitter and the braces that secure it. “The way the splitter was damaged, we really couldn’t fix it,” Wood said.
Elliott and the team soldiered on, and were hanging onto the lead draft into the first attempt at a green-white-checkered-flag finish, when Elliott suddenly veered into Joey Logano’s car, bringing out the caution flag and further damaging his own car. The crew patched up the damage as best they could, and Elliott brought the #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion home in 27th place.
Elliott shouldered the blame for the Logano incident, even though it appeared on TV replays that the right front tire of his car was deflating just prior to the contact with Logano. “That was my fault down there,” he said. “I ran in on whoever I was following toward the middle and I had to check up a little bit, so when I started up Logano was on me,” he said. “I’m sure my spotter told me, but I didn’t hear him”. “What are you going to do with a green-white-checker? It’s just one of those things.”
And Elliott also said, like many of his fellow drivers, that the problems with the track, problems that caused two lengthy red-flag delays, were something that couldn’t be helped. “I hated to see that,” he said. “I wanted the race to go on and keep running, but we did the best we could, and we’ll do it again.”
Len Wood said that despite the misfortunes near the end of the 500, he left Daytona pleased with the team’s performances, including its fourth-place qualifying effort, and with the honors bestowed on his father and the family team. “All in all, it was a good two weeks,” he said.
Elliott and the Woods return to action the first week of March, in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Elliott’s home track and the site of a series record 12 Cup victories for the Wood Brothers team.

By Ryan McGee
ESPN The Magazine
Archive
As the 27-car starting grid for Thursday’s first Gatorade Duel 150 qualifying race rolled off pit road, I climbed the stairs of the Sprint Fan Deck. Hundreds of fans lined the railing that overlooked the frontstretch and the Cup Series garage below. They snapped photos and shouted down to the stars, cars, and crews of today’s billion-dollar sport. They begged and pleaded for autographs from everyone from Cup champs to tire changers.

Behind them, an older gentleman in a black Ford Racing jacket shuffled up the stairs and silently took a spot against the mostly empty rear railing at their backs. I paused to see if anyone recognized him. They did not. So I eased over to stand next to him and extended a hand.

“Mr. Wood, how are you today?”

It was Glen Wood, founder and co-owner of Wood Brothers Racing. He shook my hand, slapped me on the shoulder and asked me to stand with him to watch the race, specifically the red No. 21 Ford Fusion driven by Bill Elliott.

This, race fans, was a very big deal.

Sixty years ago Glen ran a sawmill in Stuart, Va., a tiny town tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains along the North Carolina-Virginia border. When he and his four brothers saw another local woodman, Curtis Turner, become a local racing hero, they decided to build a race car of their own.

“Yeah,” Glen told me with a wink. “That ended up being a pretty good idea, didn’t it?”

Yes it did. Wood Brothers Racing has scored nearly 100 Cup Series wins and 117 poles, and when Petty Enterprises merged with Gillett Evernham Motorsports in 2009, Wood Brothers became the oldest team in NASCAR.

Ryan McGee/ESPN The Magazine
Glen Wood is still active in NASCAR, and on Thursday was watching the first Gatorade Duel race from the Fan Zone at Daytona International Speedway.

The 84-year-old pointed to the high banks of Turn 3 as the field eased through behind the pace car. “I drove here twice. Both races were in 1959, the first year it was open. The biggest track any of us had ever raced on was Darlington and when we rolled in here it was, ‘Well now, what do we have here?’”

He ran two races that weekend. The first was a NASCAR Convertible Series race (yes, they used to run races without roofs). He started on the pole and was in the lead late, but ran out of fuel. Sort of.

“We were running 130 miles an hour, but the place was so big that I’d get on that long backstretch back there and it seemed like it took forever to get down to Turn 3. Then that last time the fuel started choking off. But when I hit the banking it fired back up, so I took after the three guys that had passed me,” Wood said.

That was Shorty Rollins, Marvin Panch and Richard Petty, who were running three wide on the narrow frontstretch, creating a wall of bumpers that Wood couldn’t get around. Rollins won by two feet over Panch. Wood finished fourth. Two days later Wood started the inaugural Daytona 500, starting eighth but finishing 34th of 59 cars with a cracked clutch. That was his last superspeedway race behind the wheel, but certainly not as a car owner.

“Marvin ended up driving for us, you know. I felt like we would’ve won the Daytona 500 with Marvin in 1963, but he got hurt in a sports car crash.”

They won it anyway, with substitute driver Tiny Lund. They also won the 500 with Cale Yarborough in ‘68 and A.J. Foyt in ‘72. But the most famous of the team’s 97 Cup wins came four years later in the greatest finish in racing history, when David Pearson and Petty wrecked off the final turn of the final lap and Pearson took the checkered flag rolling at all of about 15 mph. (See for yourself here.)

“David got around Richard down the backstretch, but Richard got back by him over yonder,” Wood said, craning his neck to cast a glance over toward Turn 4. “Richard was on the inside and came up on David a little early, squeezed him toward the wall. He thought he could make David back off, but he didn’t. The most amazing part of it was that as David was spinning into the grass he came over the radio and said ‘That … so-and-so wrecked me.’ ”

As the green flag dropped and the engines roared to life in the Duel race, Wood leaned over and spoke above the noise.

“This is when you like having a guy like Bill in your race car. He’s starting third and we’re already in the Daytona 500 on our qualifying time. He’ll see what he’s got, but if everybody decides to get crazy he’ll get out of there and make sure we don’t end up with a wrecked car.”

[+] EnlargeRacingOne/Getty Images
Richard Petty leads on the final lap, but David Pearson passes him only to watch as Petty tries to pass on the final turn. They collide and spin out into the infield grass. In the midst of a wild scramble, Pearson crosses the finish line for the win.

For an hour, the living legend verbally coached Awesome Bill through the 60-lap race.

“Bill, be careful up there …”

“He’ll ease up out of this mess right here …”

“Oops, they’ll hang him out to dry now …”

He also kept one eye on his many former employees, a roster that includes everyone from Turner and Dan Gurney to Neil Bonnett and Kyle Petty.

“Ol’ Michael Waltrip has his work cut out for him today. You know, he’s wrecked a lot of race cars, but it’s not because he’s careless. It’s because he’s fearless. A lot of other drivers could use more of that.”

Wood went on to talk about an increasingly careless attitude that seems to be creeping into today’s paddock. Six decades of owning, buying, and building race cars will make a man sensitive to the cost of carelessness. But even though he stopped driving in 1964, he hasn’t forgotten the physical cost.

“We ran a convertible race at Asheville-Weaverville [N.C.] in 1956, and there was just a cloud of red clay dust sitting on the backstretch. I was running along and when I went into that cloud and — bam! — I ran into a pile of wrecked cars that were sitting in there.”

He split his lip, cut his tongue and was so groggy from the collision that when he tried to climb out of the car he fell dizzily back into the seat. Meanwhile, cars kept hammering into the dust cloud and slamming into the carnage. All but one car ended up crashed, so the race was called with nine laps remaining (goofiest box score ever, check it out here).

“Joe Weatherly got so spooked he started trying to climb up the wall to get out of there. That was more than 50 years ago, and I still remember how much it hurt. These young guys get to feeling invincible in these new safer cars and with the soft walls, but I guarantee you it still hurts.”

As the checkered flag flew over the closest finish in Gatorade Duel history, Elliott safely crossed the finish line 22nd, sliding into the 40th starting spot for Sunday’s Daytona 500 and, more importantly, keeping the car in one piece. (“Other teams can afford to wreck their best stuff and replace it with something else. We can’t.”) It will be the 52nd Great American Race. Glen Wood has had a car in all of them.

I walked with Mr. Wood down the stairs from the Fan Deck as he apologized for being so slow. We shook hands and he slapped me on the shoulder again as he turned to walk into the garage.

Making my way to the media center, a fellow member of the press corps jogged over and asked, “Hey, who was that old man you were up there talking to during the race?” I took him by the arm and pulled him over to the Goodyear Legends of Daytona exhibit and banged my finger on the photo of David Pearson checking out his wrecked Mercury in the ‘76 500 Victory Lane.

“You see the guy pushing the car right there? The one in the glasses? That’s him.”

Then I pointed to the giant blue sign overhead.

“He’s a Legend of Daytona.”

Ryan McGee, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, is the author of “ESPN Ultimate NASCAR: 100 Defining Moments in Stock Car Racing History.” He can be reached at mcgeespn@yahoo.com.