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NASCAR Hall of Famer Glen Wood dies at 93

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer
Glen Wood at the 2016 Daytona 500. Wood Brothers Racing has won 99 Cup Series races. (Getty)
Glen Wood at the 2016 Daytona 500. Wood Brothers Racing has won 99 Cup Series races. (Getty)

NASCAR legend Glen Wood has died. He was 93.

Wood was half of the Wood Brothers duo that founded Wood Brothers Racing. He and Leonard Wood co-founded the team and started racing at NASCAR’s top level in 1953.

Glen was the team’s driver when the team started racing in NASCAR. As the team started hiring other drivers in 1957, Glen continued to drive part-time through 1964. His best season came in 1960 when he won three races in nine starts. Wood’s wins happened with Len as his crew chief.

Glen’s first win in 1960 was at Bowman-Gray Speedway. It was the first win for the team, which won five races that year. Speedy Thompson won two other races for the team.

The Wood Brothers employed drivers like Thompson, Curtis Turner and Marvin Panch before joining forces with Cale Yarborough in 1966. Yarborough won six races in 20 starts in 1968 and five more races over the next two seasons. After A.J. Foyt and Donnie Allison drove part-time for the team in 1971, David Pearson drove for the Wood Brothers in 1972.

The combination of Pearson and the Wood Brothers was nearly unstoppable. Pearson won 11 races in 18 starts with the team in 1973 and 10 races in 22 starts in 1976. Pearson started 143 races for WBR and won 43 of them. Pearson, a NASCAR Hall of Famer himself, died in November.

The team, which has competed in every season since starting in 1953, has 99 wins. Paul Menard is currently the driver of the team’s iconic No. 21 car.

Glen Wood was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012 and Len was inducted into the hall a year later. Glen missed the 2018 Daytona 500, snapping a streak of 71 straight Speedweeks he had attended. The stretch dated back to 1947 when he went to the race as a fan.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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