Wood Brothers focused on winning Daytona 500 and return to full-time status, not charters

After years of struggle and questioning its place within a sport where it had invested so much, everything seemed to be aligning for Wood Brothers Racing, which has competed in NASCAR for over six decades.

If Team Penske, Hendrick Motorsports and others are the NASCAR equivalent of Fortune 500 companies, then the Wood Brothers are the family-owned mom-and-pop business. Although once a powerhouse itself that fielded winning cars for the likes of David Pearson, A.J. Foyt and Cale Yarborough, both time and NASCAR had seemingly passed the Wood Brothers by.

But having been forced to a reduced part-time schedule due to a lack of sponsorship, 2016 is to mark the team’s return to a full slate of 36 Sprint Cup Series races for the first time in eight years. The change in fortunes was brought about thanks to Ford increasing its commitment, as well as a technical alliance with Penske. That alliance also saw Penske provide the services of Ryan Blaney, the prodigious 22-year-old driver regarded by many within the garage as a future superstar.

It’s never that simplistic, though. Not for a single-car operation that out of survival had chosen to compete selectively. That decision had placed Wood Brothers in a precarious position and it came to a head when NASCAR introduced its team charter system Tuesday, with a mechanism guaranteeing 36 teams automatic entry into all 36 races and bringing with it increased monetary benefits.

Despite a long, proud and illustrious history, including 98 premier division wins, the Wood Brothers were not among the 36 teams awarded a charter. NASCAR had set the criteria mandating charter teams to have run in every race over the past three years, a requirement the Wood Brothers failed to meet.

A palpable group of fans took the snub as a show of disrespect toward the Wood Brothers. After all, the team was the exact kind NASCAR had built itself upon, the very essence of what stock racing is supposed to represent.

“Yeah, it is really overwhelming the amount of response we got on social media and phone calls and emails and things,” said Eddie Wood, the son of team patriarch Glen Wood, Friday at Daytona International Speedway. “All of our fans are supporting us. That really makes you feel good because you never really know what is out there until something triggers those guys to speak up.”

Even Brian France, NASCAR’s CEO and chairman, felt for the venerable team, the sport’s oldest active participant.

“My hope is they’ll be able to obtain a charter at some point down the road,” France said Thursday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “The criteria that was ultimately used obviously didn’t permit that, and that is disappointing because they’re obviously such an iconic part of NASCAR. But, look, they’re going to compete at a high level all year long now, and that is the nice part about this new arrangement.”

The Wood Brothers will now have to qualify on speed in every 2016 race. That’s not a daunting proposition because of the speed Blaney flashed in 16 starts last season, but a hurdle nonetheless that leaves the team vulnerable should unusual circumstances arise.

And going forward, the Wood Brothers’ only avenue to acquire a charter is by purchasing one from a team that possesses one. Michael Waltrip Racing’s closure over the offseason created two such available charters, though neither went to the Wood Brothers.

Instead, MWR co-owner Rob Kauffman sold the charters to Stewart-Haas Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing for a figure somewhere in the single-digit millions.

“It was pretty evident that the two that Rob had were going to go to [JGR] and [SHR], so we couldn’t compete with that, so we really never went there,” Eddie Wood said. “I didn’t think I could outbid Gene Haas and Joe Gibbs.”

That Kauffman happens to be the president of the Race Team Alliance, a coalition of NASCAR team owners, and a key lynchpin in the negotiations with NASCAR presents some unseemly optics, though all involved adamantly state no shenanigans were involved.

To their credit, brothers Eddie and Len and Eddie’s son, Jon, took the high road when they met with reporters Friday. Had they chosen to blast NASCAR, the charter system or Kauffman, few would have begrudged them. They did, however, resign their RTA membership.

“My grandpa didn’t start this team in 1950 to make a pile of money,” Jon Wood said. “It was a completely different environment then, it was all about racing and that is it. That has been engrained in these two (Eddie and Len) and you can’t really change that business model.

“If what you do is race, and you are not a business man first, then you can only make the best decisions you can make. Whatever it takes to have the best performance, not limp through on some kind of hope of something down the road where you can cash in.”

That is what the Wood Brothers are -- racers. Thus, the team’s focus is on winning a sixth Daytona 500 and, following that, the subsequent 35 races.

“The way the thing is structured, if you do what you’re supposed to do performance-wise, it will all work out,” Eddie Wood said. “We’ve been racing a long, long time.”