Glen Wood looks back on legendary NASCAR career (cont'd)

Q: Your team hired so many great drivers. Is there only one you consider to be the best?

Wood: I've been asked that question many times but I guess you'd have to say that David Pearson's record speaks for itself. There were a lot of good ones in there. Marvin Panch was about the first one who started driving full time for us. Curtis Turner drove several races for us, and won the first one at Rockingham after a two- or three-year layoff. Of course, there's A.J. Foyt and Cale Yarborough. Then Pearson and Neil Bonnett, Kyle Petty and Dale Jarrett. One of the ones who had the best percentage of wins for us was Dan Gurney.

Q: What would you say is your greatest moment in racing?

Wood Brothers

Team Statistics

Years	56
Starts	1,342
Wins	97
Top-5	336
Top-10	518
Poles	118
Laps Led	24,618
Avg. Start	15.2
Avg. Finish	16.8

Through July 28, 2009

Pride of NASCAR

Kyle Petty talks to the longtime legendary owners Glen and Leonard Wood.

• Video: Pride of NASCAR

Wood: I don't know. That would be hard to choose. One of the greatest ones would have been when Marvin Panch was driving for us in 1963 at Daytona and he was also driving a Maserati sports car. And he flipped and turned over and was burned real bad. So there was our car with no driver. And Tiny Lund was one of the ones who helped get Marvin out of the sports car. He literally dragged him out. So we decided to put him in the car and see what he could do, and he went on to win that race. That was one of the few races ever run at Daytona where we didn't have to change a tire. But back then, they had tread on them, and after the tread wore down a little bit, the tires would actually stick better. They weren't like they are today, where if you run them 10 laps, they get off and if you take them off and put a new set on, you're a whole lot faster. It wasn't that way back then.

Another time, we were asked by the Ford Motor Company to assist in the pitting of Jimmy Clark's Indy car in 1965. We managed to make just two pit stops. The first one was 19.7 seconds, the second one was 24.7 or something like that. So it was a total of 44-something seconds, which is probably the least time anybody's ever spent in the pits in a winning race at Indy. And we didn't change a tire that day, either.

Q: What is the biggest change that's taken place since 1950?

Wood: The biggest change is the cost. It's just unbelievable how much it costs to run a team now as compared to before. In the '70s, when we were running with David Pearson, we won half the races we ran with him then, but still they didn't pay anything compared to what they do today, and we ran most of that time on less than $100,000 a season, for 18-20 races. Now, $100,000 wouldn't get you to the first race. That's got to be the biggest change.

Q: If you could choose the first five members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, who would you select?

Wood: I would like to give you my opinion, but that wouldn't be fair. There are so many deserving ones to go in there and there's just a certain few -- you can imagine who I'm thinking -- that should be at the top of that. There's no question about two or three of them. But it would be hard to pick five. I wouldn't want to be the one who did that.

Q: What do you think will be your legacy in this sport?

Wood: The one thing I'm proudest of is that we started this thing close to the same time NASCAR started and I'm the only living one yet that's still standing, so to speak. It's pretty amazing to me that somehow through all of the hard times that goes along with racing -- there were some lean years, there's no question about that -- we've managed to see so many of them come and go. Some raced a little while, some quit, some started when I did and fell out along the way. Somehow, with the help with my brothers, my sons and daughter and most of all, Ford Motor Company, we're still here. And that's about as good as it can get, for me, I guess.