Woods mix celebration with business

Dick Brinster

Wednesday, March 28, 2001 | 12:50 p.m.

Elliott Sadler's improbable victory hadn't even been digested, yet Eddie Wood was back at the track trying to figure out if one of NASCAR's pioneer teams was about to start a renaissance.

The Wood Brothers, who frequently celebrated wins by such greats as Cale Yarborough and David Pearson, haven't had very many parties in the last 20 years. Still, it was business as usual less than 16 hours after Sadler ended the team's eight-year drought with a victory Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Wood, whose father and uncle founded the team in 1953, had his third-year driver back in their Ford testing in Martinsville, Va., before the sun even had a chance to dry the dew off the track.

"You think about it every day," Wood said of talk that the team would never win again. "The media will ask you about that all the time. It's something you just live with."

At least the team won't have to be discussed almost exclusively in the past tense.

"I think it's the biggest thing that's happened to our race team, ever," Wood said.

Now, all he needs to do is figure out how it happened - especially in view of everything that went wrong last weekend. Primarily, Sadler crashed the primary car in practice Friday, necessitating use of their backup Taurus for the Food City 500.

Crew chief Pat Tryson decided that track position was vital and let the car go the last 162 laps without a tire change. This time, most of the contenders used a similar approach.

"Usually, when we do something like that, it doesn't work out," said Wood, whose driver took the lead with 70 laps remaining.

Still, the team had an anxious moment. With 20 laps remaining, Sadler radioed in saying he thought a tire was going flat after contact with Kevin Harvick.

"You start wondering what else can go wrong," Wood said.

For a change, nothing did. It was just a smell of burning rubber.

Sadler said he felt as relieved afterward as the Woods.

"After a while, you began looking in the mirror, asking myself, 'Am I the right person?"' Sadler said. "I didn't want to be the person responsible for the Wood Brothers going down."

After last season, the team lost longtime sponsor Citgo, and there was a question of how long it could go on. But Ford rescued the Woods with its Motorcraft products brand, and an association with powerful Roush Racing has produced better equipment.

Still, that didn't guarantee the team would succeed with a 25-year-old driver who had not won in his first two seasons in Winston Cup. Sadler expected to struggle the first season, but thought the breakthrough victory might come in 2000.

It was more the same, however, and the Woods wound up their fourth straight season without a top-five finish.

"Last year, a lot of the other young guys were starting to win," Sadler said. "A lot of things start going through your mind, and you wonder what will happen.

"They could easily have changed me this year."

But they stuck with him, and the payoff was their first victory since Morgan Shepherd in 1993. It was only the second top finish in 13 years for a racing operation whose 97 victories are second to Petty Enterprises' 271.

Sadler celebrated quietly after completing two days of testing in Martinsville. Then it was on to Fort Worth for the Harrah's 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

In some ways, that's even more important to Sadler than recognition as a winner.

"Texas is one of the tracks where we run very well," he said. "I really want to prove that we can be a strong team, that it wasn't a fluke."

Sadler also is shooting for a top-15 finish the points, something he said brought some chuckles when he first stated that as a goal. Now, with perennial top-10 fixtures such as Mark Martin, Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte struggling badly, that doesn't sound so ridiculous.

The team is ninth after finishing 24th and 29th in points in Sadler's first two seasons and hasn't had a driver win the NASCAR title since 1963.

That doesn't bother Wood, who runs the team with his brother, Len.

"You just never give up," he said. "And there's one thing you always need to remember about NASCAR. You can go from the top to the bottom or the bottom to the top awfully fast."

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On the net:

Wood Brothers: http://www.woodbrothersracing.com

Sadler: http://www.sadlerfanclub.com

NASCAR: http://www.nascar.com

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