Glen Wood’s stock-car racing history mirrors that of NASCAR. He and brother Leonard had a talent for mechanical things, and in 1950, started a family racing operation with a few friends around their hometown of Stuart, Va. They raced local tracks, and by 1953, Glen Wood had moved up into NASCAR’s premier division. And thanks to Leonard’s innovations, the Wood Brothers were responsible for inventing the modern pit stop.
Q: Your team was known for innovation, particularly for inventing and refining the modern-day pit stop. How did that come about?
Wood: Well, when you were running on the track around two or three seconds behind, and you both made pit stops under green and you both came back out and now you’re ahead of that guy, it didn’t take too much thinking to realize we could do something about that. I guess we were maybe the first ones to take it a little more serious about faster stops. I would give credit to Leonard more for that than myself, because he was the crew chief and what that meant back in those days was he did most of the work.
He helped work with Ingersoll-Rand to perfect the air guns that they have today. They kept trying to get one better, and we would try them and suggest things to make them better, and as it turns out, we found one that was the best and they perfected it. And that’s still the best air gun you can get today. And in the meantime, jacks were another important thing in a pit stop. A drive-off, store-bought jack to raise the car the height it needed to be would take 10, 15 pumps. And Leonard perfected one that would do it in two or three. The cars are lighter today so using that very same type of jack, they’ve got them so they can lift them on one or two pumps. Back when we were running, the cars were 4,500 pounds. You had to have a lot more force to raise it than you do now.
All of that came into play at sort of the same time. They had a lot of pit races and pit contests then, especially Union Oil at the time had that. And sometimes at various race tracks. And we won a lot of them. Naturally, as we got more familiar with it, we did better. And we practiced at it, probably more than some of them did, but they practice now, night and day almost. We didn’t do that, but as long as you’re beating the competition out, that’s all you needed.
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.
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