#21 Team on Top after 1st Day of Practices

If experience translated into victories, the Wood Brothers and Bill Elliott could begin chilling their champagne and preparing their victory speeches. The Wood Brothers bring four Daytona victories to this year’s 500 (1963, 1968, 1972 and 1976) while Bill Elliott has two Daytona 500 victories under his belt (1985 and 1987). However, racing, particularly in today’s NASCAR’s top racing series, is an ultra-competitive endeavor where even the smallest mistake can mean the difference between making the race or watching it on T.V.

The #21 team, led by Crew Chief David Hyder, has worked smarter this off-season in an attempt to limit those mistakes. This year’s theme is “attention to detail." Just as the Wood Brothers reaped the success of running a limited schedule in earlier days, team owners Len and Eddie Wood hope to bring that philosophy and those same results to this year’s team.

If today is any indication of how the year will go, the Wood’s have a lot to look forward to. This afternoon, the #21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion took to the track for the first time this year. Because of the unique qualifying requirements for Daytona, teams spent much of the day running qualifying laps. During each of the two practice sessions, Bill was on top of the speed charts having run the fastest laps in each session.

Eddie Wood commented on today’s effort. “Hyder, the guys at the shop and the Ford engineers spent the off-season working their tails off. We did more off-track testing than ever before and went over every inch of this car at least 100 times. So far so good. I hope we can bring home some good results this week for our sponsors (Ford and Motorcraft). During these difficult economic times, Ford and Motorcraft have stuck with us. Nothing would mean more than to deliver a good performance with good marketing results for them."

The teams qualify tomorrow – Sunday, February 8, 2009. You can watch qualifying on FOX – coverage begins at 1:00pm.

On a more personal note, today is Bernece and Glen Wood’s 58th wedding anniversary. Glen and Bernece left this morning for Daytona. This will be Glen Wood’s 61st straight year of going to Daytona…