MARTINSVILLE, Va. – About 29 miles east on US-58 from Martinsville Speedway is the town of Stuart, Va., home to one of the most famous historical annals in all of NASCAR.
That look back in time is, of course, the legendary Wood Brothers Racing team, which launched in 1950 just after the dawn of NASCAR as a sanctioning body and operated out of Stuart until 2006, when they moved to Harrisburg, N.C. in partnership with what is now JTG-Daugherty Racing.
That deal came and went in two years, but the Woods’ primary shop remained in North Carolina, later moving to Mooresville ahead of the 2017 season as part of an expanded technical alliance with Team Penske announced two years prior.
Still, the heart and soul of the Wood Brothers team remained in Stuart, evidenced by the Wood Brothers Museum that still remains in operation today and displays much of the team’s storied racing history.
The point to all this? The Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Ford is the home team for this weekend’s STP 500 at Martinsville’s half-mile paper clip, and new team driver Paul Menard is more than excited to drive the famed number on its home race track for his first time.
Glen Wood actually made the Woods’ first-career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start at Martinsville in 1953, finishing 30th in a 35-car field that day in a 1953 Lincoln that carried sponsorship from R.L.L.R.B. Bowling.
Now, six and a half decades later, Menard will start the team’s 1,516th career Cup race on Sunday as he chases the 100th career premier series win for NASCAR’s longest continually-operating organization.
It’s a moment that the Wisconsin native is savoring and a race where he hopes he can perform well in front of many of the team’s home supporters.
“It’ll be pretty special because it’s the home track for the Wood Brothers,” Menard said. “I know they have a lot of fans up there, so we want to do well for them.”
Racing at Martinsville has long been a double-edged sword for many drivers, and Menard’s feelings on the tight bullring are no different.
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Menard said of his past experiences with Martinsville. “It’s a lot of fun to drive on that track, and the races are fun … for the most part, but they can be frustrating.”
But just like the Wood Brothers team, Martinsville and its racing are throwbacks to the early days of the sport, something that Menard recognizes each time he goes there.
“It’s going back to NASCAR’s roots,” he said. “And it’s a track a lot like the ones a lot of us came up racing on.”
After two top-10s in the first five races of the season and a 15th-place ranking in points that puts his team inside the provisional playoff grid, Menard is optimistic about his chances to have a strong showing in Sunday’s race.
That positivity grows even further when considering the Woods’ strong technical alliance with Team Penske and the fact that Brad Keselowski is the defending winner of the spring Martinsville event.
“This is the first real short-track race of the year, and the Fords have been strong there the last few years,” said Menard. “We were definitely happy with our performance at Fontana, too. We had a top-10 car most of the day and passed a lot of cars coming from the back to the front. We’ll hope to continue that this weekend.”
