For Wood Brothers, home is where the pressure is

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Eddie Wood slept in his own bed Friday night, and actually slept. He hadn't done either in a while.

"It's been a long week," he said.

Every team outside the top 35 in owner points faces pressure to make Nextel Cup events on speed. But when that team is the Wood Brothers, and that event is at Martinsville Speedway, the consequences become difficult to imagine. The Woods have been a fixture on this half-mile oval since 1953, when Eddie's father, Glen, brought a car from his hometown of Stuart, 30 miles down the road, and one of NASCAR's most enduring traditions was born.

Schrader gets in

With the pressure of making the show, Eddie Wood was relieved when his driver Ken Schrader qualified on time at Martinsville.

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Martinsville without the Woods would be like Sonoma without the vineyards, Michigan without the traffic, Daytona without the beach. But that very possibility loomed after Ken Schrader suffered a pit penalty last week at Bristol and finished 28th, a result that dropped the 57-year-old team to 39th in owner points and placed it in jeopardy of missing a Martinsville race for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.

"You don't want to miss a show anywhere. If it's in Russia, you don't want to miss a show," said Eddie Wood, now co-owner of the team his father and uncle founded. "You're supposed be racing every Sunday, but being at home is nice. Now we're all racing out of Charlotte. But it's good to come home and be around what you're used to being around."

Especially after Schrader turned the fourth-fastest lap of Friday's qualifying session, easily locking the Wood Brothers' No. 21 car into the Goody's Cool Orange 500. Much has changed for this team in recent years, from the addition of partner Tad Geschickter -- the organization's formal name is Wood Brothers/JTG Racing -- to the transfer of racing operations from Stuart to metro Charlotte in 2003.

But its identity will be forever tied to this corner of Southern Virginia. The old shop that fielded cars for David Pearson, Cale Yarborough and A.J. Foyt still stands in Stuart. Wood's mother runs the museum, which stays open on Saturday during race weekends in Martinsville. There are even a few crewmen who work on transmissions, and transfer the pieces to the main shop in Harrisburg, N.C., around the corner from Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"Coming to Martinsville is like coming home," Wood said. "I'm going to eat some hot dogs. I can remember coming here when I was like 8 years old, with my dad racing modifieds. It goes way back. I remember when there was grass in [the infield], and they had a pond out there with a bunch of ducks. They had a zillion ducks over there. This place has been good to us. It's just like going home."

Michael McSwain feels the same way. The former crew chief and current director of competition for the Wood Brothers grew up in western North Carolina, but has always felt a connection to Martinsville.

"To me personally, this has always been my Daytona 500," he said. "I've never won it. I've finished in the top five with some different drivers, I don't know how many times, and something's always happened. I like running good here. I put a lot of emphasis on this racetrack, and have for years. I just want to keep running good."

Schrader tested at Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., in preparation for Sunday's event, and the team worked exclusively on qualifying setups Friday, knowing all the focus had to be on making the race. But a fourth-place starting position was more than anyone had hoped for.

"I'd have been happy with 43rd," Wood said. "I didn't want to leave here. I didn't want to be in Stuart watching Happy Hour on TV. I didn't want that."

Schrader was 25th-fastest in Saturday's first practice, but improved to 17th in the final session. McSwain said setups usually vary little at Martinsville between qualifying and the race, leading him to believe that Friday's performance is an accurate indication of what the car is capable of Sunday. Wood sees an additional benefit to starting up front.

"Short-track racing, if you can qualify up front and stay there -- I'm talking about the top eight to 12 positions -- they race different there," he said. "Those people make laps. They're courteous. You get to the end, and then they race. You get back into the jungle, from 20th on back, they race every lap like it's the last lap. You use it up just trying to survive. So starting up front will help. If we can have good pit stops and not have any problems, we could have a good day."