In the midst of its 75th year in NASCAR, Wood Brothers Racing has experienced just about everything there is in motorsports.
For the Wood Brothers, decades of success had been built by long nights, torn-up race cars and recycled parts. The fruit of that labor was produced from the 1960s and into the 1990s, credited to drivers such as Marvin Panch, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Neil Bonnett, Kyle Petty and Dale Jarrett.
However, once the pinnacle is reached, it is arguably even more challenging to stay there, and the family-owned team faced those challenges head-on from the late 1990s all the way to the early 2010s.
There were bright spots along the way, such as Elliott Sadler‘s 2001 win at Bristol Motor Speedway that we documented last week, or Trevor Bayne‘s colossal upset in the 2011 Daytona 500. But intermingled in, and really, the primary identity of the team during that era, was its lowest point in the sport.
In relation to that, the American author Zig Ziglar once said, “Sometimes, adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.”
For the Wood Brothers, this period in the early portion of the 21st century provided plenty of adversity.
Following Sadler’s departure in 2002, the team brought on savvy veteran Ricky Rudd to pilot the No. 21 Ford, hoping to break into the top 20 in points for the first time in five years. Despite four top-five efforts that season, Rudd could only muster a 23rd-place points finish. That was followed up by a 24th-place standing in 2004, and then a near-miss in 2005 by finishing 21st on the back of nine top 10s.
Rudd stepped away from full-time racing following that season (he’d be back in 2007) and the Wood Brothers called another veteran to fill the seat. That would be Ken Schrader, a four-time NASCAR Cup Series winner who moved over from BAM Racing. However, the road for WBR kept getting rockier.
“I had driven the BAM car for three years, and we were pretty beat down,” Schrader told Frontstretch. “We had some pretty good runs, but we hadn’t run like we had before. When I got the phone call from [the Wood Brothers], that was huge, but I didn’t realize how quite beat down they were, too. We went to the first race at Daytona, and we finished ninth, so that was a good way to start. It was pretty much downhill from there. We just had a terrible year.”
Schrader managed to score two top 10s during that season, but the team suffered its worst points finish as a full-time team in 31st. Partnered with JTG Daugherty Racing at the time (which is now known as HYAK Motorsports), the plague only continued to snowball. The No. 21 failed to qualify for a race on three occasions in 2007, and the ride was split between four drivers, with Schrader and 1988 Cup champion Bill Elliott mostly sharing driving duties. Elliott’s spot at WBR came despite Schrader having a two-year contract with the team.
“We started off the next year, and we didn’t go very far,” Schrader said. “They had to do something. We were missing some races, and I don’t want to go into what and why, but the [Wood family] and I pretty much agreed on what the problem was, but there really wasn’t anything we could do about it. So they put Bill in the car because of the champion’s provisional.”
The provisional guaranteed that the team would compete in at least six races should they not qualify on speed, with Elliott only failing to qualify for one of those races. Despite the mid-season swap and external inhibitors on his car, Schrader harbored no ill will towards the team.
“The neatest thing that I can say is that was the only time in my Cup career that I got replaced — I didn’t get fired because I had a contract, and I still got paid — but I got replaced, and as far as the boys’ relationship and mine, it made absolutely no difference,” Schrader said. “I would do anything for them guys any time because they don’t come any better than that family.”
The 2007 season commenced a cycle over the next several years of tapping drivers with track or experience-oriented skills, such as road course aces Boris Said and Marcos Ambrose. Veterans like Schrader and Elliott did their best to provide feedback on what was missing. And young drivers such as David Gilliland, Bayne, and current team co-owner and president Jon Wood got a shot in the ride.
Yet improvement seemed non-existent, with a third-place run by Ambrose at Watkins Glen International serving as the only top 10 for WBR from 2007 until Bayne’s breakthrough victory in the 2011 Daytona 500.
Behind the scenes, the Wood family was certainly discouraged, yet never gave up hope on one day returning to relevancy.
“They obviously didn’t like it,” Schrader said of the family’s approach to the struggles. “We couldn’t fix it at the time. They got through it. Made some organizational changes, but they got through it.”
Schrader consistently maintained communication with the Wood family, even mentioning how they joked with one another about popular ‘sayings’ that went through the shop in one of their darkest moments.
“It was funny because I’d talk to them every week even though I wasn’t driving,” Schrader recalled. “One time, they called me up and wanted me to run a race. Now remember, they’re paying me every month. I said, ‘I can’t run it. I’ve got something else scheduled. I mean, I know you’re paying me, but I’ve got something else scheduled,’ and their comment was, ‘Yeah, nobody really wants to drive our car.’ I don’t know what words to use, but I just can’t stress enough how good of people they are.”
Struggles and all, the connection between Schrader and the Wood Brothers rooted deep, with the current dirt racer’s NASCAR career paralleling that of NASCAR’s oldest team.
The Fenton, Mo. native embarked on his rookie season in 1985, the same year WBR went full-time, thanks in part to full-season sponsorship from 7-Eleven when Petty came aboard. Schrader’s freshman campaign came with Junie Donlavey Racing, a fellow Ford team with similar blue-collar values possessed by the Wood Brothers.
“When [WBR] went full-time, it was in ’85,” Schrader said. “That’s the first year I ran. So, I mean, they’re running a full schedule, and I’m just starting. We were a Ford, and they were Ford, and Mr. Donlavey was well-respected by everybody, so we’d just always talk with them. I had a bet with them for years, like ’85 through probably the mid-’90s. We’d bet $50 on qualifying, who out-qualified who, and then we bet $50 on the race. You either won both, lost $100 or broke part and lost nothing.”
Playful quips and fun contests were just a sample of the relationship the two sides established over the years. And even when there was little to smile about racing-wise, the jokes continued on mediocre days.
“When I drove for them, a joke was that we’d get the checkered flag and run 15th, and the first thing you’d hear was, ‘Good points day,'” Schrader said. “So I’ll text them every now and then and say, ‘Hey, that was a good points day.'”
At its lowest point, the core values that have made WBR what it is today withstood the trial by fire: family, work ethic, and relationships. And no matter the on-track results, those qualities are what many of its drivers, like Schrader, and those associated with the group remember most.
“Just getting the call to actually drive for them,” Schrader said when asked about his favorite memory with the team. “That was a huge honor. Just had a lot of good times with them. I can’t come up with a race, anything like that, but just a lot of good times with them.”
Those good times off the track and intangible characteristics eventually paid off in performance once again, slowly but surely. The team signed rising talent Ryan Blaney to pilot the No. 21 part-time in 2015 before moving to full-time in 2016 as part of an alliance with Team Penske.
The result? Blaney earned a momentous win at Pocono Raceway in 2017, holding off champions Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch to punch the Wood Brothers’ first ticket to the playoffs.
Seven years after Blaney logged win number 99 for the organization, Harrison Burton finally got them back to victory lane in 2024’s regular-season finale to reach milestone win number 100 and return to the playoffs.
Presently, Josh Berry has already secured the team its bid in the 2025 Cup playoffs by virtue of his win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earlier this season. It’s the first time in the playoff era that WBR has made back-to-back postseasons.
In hindsight, those lean years for the generational team stretched nearly a decade. Unfortunately, it was the downside of otherwise respectable or great careers like those of Rudd, Schrader and Elliott. But even the toughest trees, the strongest people and the most illustrious organizations have been battle-tested at some point.
To finish with another adage, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And for NASCAR’s longest standing organization, they may only be getting stronger.
Entering his fifth year with Frontstretch, Luken Glover is the author of The Underdog House, shedding light on the motivation and performance of NASCAR's dark horse teams as they strive to fight to the top. Additionally, Glover reports for the site at various events, and he contributes in the video editing department.
A 2023 graduate of the University of the Cumberlands, Glover is a middle school math and PE teacher, as well as a basketball coach. He is passionate about serving in his church, playing/coaching a wide variety of sports, and researching motorsports history.