Wood Brothers hope to run full-time again someday

Wood Brothers Racing is one of NASCAR's all-time most famous and most successful teams. Their legendary #21 car, currently a Ford Fusion, has been a fixture in the Sprint Cup Series for decades, and has been piloted by such drivers as David Pearson, Junior Johnson, Buddy Baker, Neil Bonnett, Dale Jarrett, Ricky Rudd and Bill Elliott. But in recent years, sponsorship issues have forced the family from Virginia to cut back on the number of races in which they compete. The Wood Brothers did tend to run part-time schedules in their early years, like most teams in that era, although that was before teams running for the series championship were required to enter every race.

But the #21 team is hoping to eventually return to a full-time schedule and get back into the NASCAR spotlight. The Woods last visited victory lane in 2011, when 20-year-old Trevor Bayne shocked the motorsports world by winning the Daytona 500 in just his second Cup series start. It was the first win for the famed #21 machine since Elliott Sadler's 2001 Bristol win. The team last ran full-time in 2007 with a split between Elliott, Ken Schrader, Jon Wood and Boris Said. They did get more sponsorship following Bayne's Daytona 500 win, but they continued to run part-time with him, while at the same time entering into an alliance with Roush Fenway Racing, where Bayne was a research and development driver at the time.

Bayne is now going full-time to the Sprint Cup Series with Roush in the #6 Ford, which will take the place of Carl Edwards' #99 car from the past decade. The #21 will be taken over by three-time Truck and two-time Xfinity race winner Ryan Blaney, and the Woods have entered into a new Ford alliance with Team Penske, with whom Blaney is a development driver, and which Blaney's former truck team Brad Keselowski Racing is also aligned with since Keselowski is a Cup driver with Penske. The #21 will probably be most closely associated with Penske's part-time #12 car. It could be the first step toward the Wood Brothers going back to full-time competition, but we'll have to see how Blaney performs as the legendary team's newest driver.