After Vegas Win, It's Clear This isn't Your Dad's Wood Brothers Racing
The Wood Brothers Racing team is an organization steeped in historical achievements and a team that carries a tail of being the longest-tenured team in NASCAR Cup Series history. On Sunday, the iconic No. 21 Ford Mustang Dark Horse found victory lane once again, this time with Josh Berry behind the wheel in just his fifth race with the team.
The crazy thing about the 101st win for the Wood Brothers is that the win was no random appearance of speed for the No. 21 team. No, they've been really good essentially all season long, so far.
Berry and the No. 21 team had cars capable of competing for the race win in the season-opening Daytona 500, and the following week at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he led 56 races before being swept up in a last-lap crash. A couple of weeks later, Berry recorded a fourth-place finish at Phoenix Raceway, which equated to the first-ever top-five finish for the organization at the 1-mile oval.
A week removed from setting the all-time best mark for the team at Phoenix, Berry found himself in Las Vegas Motor Speedway's victory lane after outdueling Daniel Suarez for the race lead with 16 laps to go.
After returning to pit road to tighten a loose wheel with 94 laps to go, Berry was trapped outside the top 30 of the running order in the Pennzoil 400. His car was so fast, and Stanley's strategic calls from atop the pit box were so good that it simply didn't matter. Berry knifed his way through the field to put himself back in contention.
Berry credited his crew chief for the call to try to stretch the fuel tank over the final portion of the race in order to allow them to gain additional track position as other cars peeled off the track for fuel.
"After we had to come down pit road and tighten up the wheel, I told him don’t be afraid to do something different here because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to get back up front," Berry recalled. "That’s what he did. I mean, [the] dude’s pretty good."
With Berry back in the picture, and the race on the line, his No. 21 pit crew got him back on track in the runner-up spot on the final pit stop, and Berry got the job done from there.
Another impressive note about the win is the fact that it came at a 1.5-mile intermediate oval, not a superspeedway like Daytona or Talladega. The feeling among many is that anyone can essentially win a superspeedway race if they're in the right place at the right time so long as they get the right shove from behind in the closing laps. The No. 21 team heard that last year after it collected a win with Harrison Burton in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
This win by Berry should carry no astericks from the fans, the media, or anyone within the NASCAR community.
"This one was legit," said Team President and co-owner Jon Wood after the team's first non-superspeedway win since 2017. "Sometimes they’ll put an asterisk beside a speedway race. It’s speedway racing. He dominated those last 20 laps. Look at our track position, our qualifying, the whole package from Daytona to now, if you throw out COTA, you’re not supposed to throw ’em out, but if you do, his qualifying average is fifth. He’s either led or won in every race since. It’s not supposed to be this easy. I think that’s just a testament to his level of focus and [crew chief] Miles [Stanley]’[s} big brain."
To Wood's point, Berry qualified third at Atlanta, fourth at Phoenix, and seventh for Sunday's Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The No. 21 team had just three top-10 starting positions last season, and they didn't start rolling in until October. They're very much ahead of schedule from a year ago.
Eddie Wood chalks up the impressive turnaround for the Wood Brothers Racing team to the incredible chemistry that has been building within the organization between the driver, new crew chief Miles Stanley, and the entire team working on pit road and in the shop throughout the week. Everyone is pulling in the same direction.
"We ran really well all year so far, early in the season. Things felt right. They just feel right," Wood declared. "I think Josh fits us. Miles fits us. Everything just fits. I used to make fun of people years ago when they would talk about chemistry. Football teams, baseball, all that. Then it kind of bled over into racing. This goes back a few years. When things click, they click."
With the win, the Wood Brothers Racing team has picked up a win in each of the last two seasons, something the organization had not pulled off in nearly 40 years as a win by Kyle Petty in the 1987 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway was the last time the team checked the box on back-to-back seasons with a win.
Many have questioned whether the alliance that Wood Brothers Racing has with Team Penske was strengthened in the offseason to lead to the increase in performance on the track. Jon Wood, who spent years as the social media admin for his family's team before being thrust into the role of Team President last year, says it's tiring hearing people try to give excuses for his team's success when they find it.
"When we suck, it’s our fault. But when we do good, we had nothing to do with it," Wood said. "It’s 100% Penske or something. I think that’s a frustrating part. These are our guys that are doing this. We sat in a room and debated who our next driver would be for 2025. It’s Josh Berry. Those are decisions that we made collectively. It’s our race team and our decision. It gets a little frustrating."
Wood continued, "It hurts a little bit when I see that stuff. But then this happens and the results speak for themselves. I haven’t really had to be super crappy on social lately, defend ourselves. He’s just doing it. That’s the neat part."
Berry and the new-look No. 21 team are certainly getting it done this season.
With that being said, it's becoming more clear by the week that what we're seeing out of the Virginia-based team is not the Wood Brothers Racing team of your father's generation. However, the chances are the team is now more closely starting to resemble the Wood Brothers Racing of your grandfather's era.
The team has refused to quit over the years, even when success looked near-impossible to find at the NASCAR Cup Series level. Prior to the win by Burton at Daytona last October, the Wood Brothers Racing team had collected just five wins over its last 1,108 starts in the NASCAR Cup Series ranks. With the latest triumph on Sunday, they've won twice in their last 17 attempts.
"Through the years we’ve been through so many ups and downs. This sport is just like every other sport: there [are] more downs than there [are] ups. When you do get in a position to be fortunate enough to have the ups, you really appreciate it," Eddie Wood said. "In racing, it’s always next week. You got another week. You got another opportunity to turn things around if you’re not doing well. That’s how I think we’ve survived this long, is just you never give up, you never quit, and you just keep going to the next race. All of a sudden things will start building. You stay on the corner long enough, it will be your turn eventually. That’s kind of the way we are."
Now, they have a long way to go before we start seeing the Wood Brothers Racing team of modern-day being seriously ranked with the Wood Brothers Racing of the David Pearson era, but they're a hell of a lot closer to achieving that than they were a season ago or than they've been over the last 36 years. The tireless persistence has paid off and the Wood Brothers Racing team is finally rightfully taking a spot as a true contender in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2025.
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.