GLEN ALEXANDRIA WOOD - 07/18/1925 - 01/18/2019
He and brother Leonard Wood co-founded the legendary Wood Brothers Racing team in 1953, and won four races over an eleven-year racing career. In 1998, he was named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers. Glen raced part-time in the Cup level from 1953 through 1964. He ran the most races in one season in 1959; when he ran 20 of 44 events. The rest of the time, he ran ten or fewer races, five season he ran as few as one or two. He collected three wins in 1960 and added another in 1963. All of his wins came at Winston-Salem at Bowman-Gray Stadium. He also raced in NASCAR's Convertible Division. The convertibles were sportier and more stylish than the staid coupes and sedans of the day. Not surprisingly, they were targeted toward younger and more spirited buyers, many of whom were race fans. And that meant automakers wanted to see their convertible models win on the race tracks of the Southeast to stimulate showroom sales. Hence the phrase, “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” In 1956, NASCAR launched its Convertible Division, which in its first season ran an ambitious 47-race schedule, starting, appropriately enough on the old Daytona
Beach & Road Course on Feb. 25. Curtis Turner would lap the field to win the race. In 1956, Turner was dominant racing the drop tops. In a 47 race series, Turner won 22 times of the 42 races he entered. But Bob Welborn would claim the Championship;... because in the 20 races Turner didn’t win, he had 14 DNFs. The popular racing phrase “go or blow” certainly applied to Turner, who seemed to always either win or tear up his car trying to. Wood got his first win in the convertibles in 1957 at Fayetteville when he would beat Joe Weatherly. Four races later Wood would visit victory lane again, this time at Richmond. Before the season closed he would get a win on the half mile dirt track
at Charlotte. Wood posted 23 top-five and 26 top-10 finishes in 36 races to finish third in points behind repeat champion Bob Welborn and Joe Weatherly. In 1958 the Convertible Series was cut back to just 19 races, and Wood would go win-less in the series. He won at Bowman-Gray in the rag tops in 1959, as NASCAR would shut down the series at the end of the year. In 1996, Wood was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame; he was also inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012. Wood died on January 18, 2019, after a battle with illness.
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