CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It is perhaps the most memorable paint scheme among many for the organization, but when your team has been around from the beginning, the options are no doubt plentiful.
“When I look at that car, I immediately think of David Pearson,” Leonard Wood said Tuesday at the Hall of Fame while standing in front of the iconic No. 21 Ford.
Pearson and Wood enjoyed a lengthy tenure, the Silver Fox winning 43 times for the team with Wood calling the shots as crew chief. The paint scheme chosen for this year’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 throwback weekend at Darlington Raceway is a nod to the 1976 season, a highlight year among many for both Pearson and the WBR organization.
The 2016 Ford Fusion that will unload for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Labor Day weekend features the same red and white paint scheme with blue piping down the sides as the Mercury Montego wheeled by Pearson.
The Pearson name adorns the driver’s side door below the window just as before; the wheels are silver and the No. 21 lettering has the gold foil look that became so familiar.
Driver Ryan Blaney’s uniform mimics that of Pearson’s as well, a white outfit with blue across the right shoulder and stripes of red, blue and red again running down off the left shoulder. On Tuesday, Blaney was even outfitted in alligator loafers similar to those worn by Pearson during his driving days.
Eddie Wood, who today oversees the operation of the team along with brother Len and sister Kim Wood Hall, said the choice of the 1976 look was “the right thing to do” to celebrate the accomplishments of four decades ago. “This is pretty much as close as you can get to (the look of) that car in ’76,” he said.
The car on display Tuesday even carried five sticks of Wrigley’s gum taped to the dash, a staple for Pearson during his tenure with the team. One stick for each 100 miles.
Pearson’s alligator footwear came from a local business, Price’s, in his hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
“They had thick heels on them,” Eddie Pearson, David’s son, said. “He’d take them back in about every six or eight months and have them re-soled.”
Because the team did not run the entire schedule during his tenure, Pearson, a three-time premier series champion and member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, did not win a title with the Wood Brothers.
But he won plenty of races. And the ’76 season was perhaps the highlight of his stay with the legendary organization.
Among his 10 victories that year were the Daytona 500, World (now Coca-Cola) 600 and Southern 500, earning him NASCAR version of the Triple Crown. The Daytona 500 victory featured a last-lap crash with Richard Petty as the two came off the final turn, both sliding to the infield as they fought for the win.
“I remember asking him, ‘Can you get him?'” Eddie Wood said of the incredible finish. “He was running second (on the white flag lap). He said ‘I’m going to try’ or something like that. You never knew what he was going to do … how much he had left.”
With no television monitors in the pits to track the action on the track, the team had no idea what was taking place after the field zoomed past.
“When they got to Turn 3, the crowd starts to stand,” Wood recalled. “Things are really going nuts. And he said, ‘I got him’ on the radio. They come off of (Turn) 4 and he says, “Richard’s under me. He got under me.’ And then he said ‘We hit.’
“The whole place goes nuts, me included. … We didn’t know what was happening, you couldn’t see. Then we saw Richard come sliding (across the infield), and here comes David … he’s spinning backwards – he actually hit a car that was coming down pit road … and that kind of straightened him up and helped him back out into the infield. But he said ‘Where’s Richard?'”
Told Petty was stopped in the infield grass along the frontstretch, Pearson told Wood, ‘Well, I’m coming.’ He got going and won the race.”
It remains one of NASCAR’s most incredible, unforgettable finishes.
“To understand it all, he’s spinning backwards and his (radio) button was on his shoulder harness, it wasn’t on the steering wheel like it is now,” Wood said. “He knocked the car out of gear, had the awareness to ask where (Richard) was – he almost needed like three hands (to do all that). But there was never, never any emotion, just matter of fact. Like talking on the telephone.”
Wins also came that year at Atlanta and Ontario, and Pearson swept races at Riverside, Michigan and Darlington. His 10 wins came in only 22 starts in what was then a 30-race season.
Blaney, competing for Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors this season, was excited to see the new look his car will carry.
“It’s awesome,” Blaney said. “I love the whole throwback concept at Darlington. To be able to do this really cool paint scheme this year – I think we’re going to have the best-looking race car out there.
“I’ve always enjoyed the Wood Brothers cars; they’re simple, but I think they’re the best looking ones.”
