KEN SCHRADER: Blissful union

Wood brothers, Geschickter join forces
Rick Minter - Staff / Friday, March 10, 2006

The pairing of the Wood Brothers' Nextel Cup race team with Tad Geschickter's Busch Series organization seems to be paying early dividends.

Ken Schrader, driving the Woods' famous No. 21 Ford in Cup, finished ninth in the Daytona 500, and Jon Wood and Stacy Compton were frontrunners in the Busch race at Daytona. Wood finished fourth; Compton had a likely top-five finish wiped out by an 11-car crash with just a few hundred feet left.

The results from California weren't as encouraging --- Schrader was 28th, Jon Wood was 18th in Busch and Compton 24th --- but team co-owner Eddie Wood said he's still happy.

"We've been fast everywhere we've been," he said. "In the middle of the race at California, Schrader was as fast as the leader, but we had a flat left-front tire. It's pretty encouraging."

Jon Wood had the fastest car in practice for last week's Busch race at Mexico City, only to be foiled by a balky transmission and a late-race wreck.

That's saying a lot for a new organization. The team combined and moved into its new shop in Harrisburg, N.C., during the winter after a chance conversation between Eddie Wood and Geschickter on the spotters' stand during practice for a Busch race last year.

"We started this project, Tad and I did, about in July," Wood said.

The initial idea, Wood said, came from his son, Jon, a third-generation racer in the Wood family who joined Geschickter's team last year.

The younger Wood realized that each team lacked the other's strengths. The Woods know the on-track part of the sport after being one of NASCAR's dominant teams since 1953. But they were having problems finding adequate funding for 2006.

Geschickter's teams were struggling to win, but as a former Procter & Gamble marketing executive, he was adept at building sponsorship relationships with companies like Kingsford and Clorox.

So Eddie Wood followed his son's advice, and soon the deal was done.

With Geschickter's contacts, the team landed Little Debbie to help support the No. 21 in Cup. Schrader, who at 50 is the oldest driver regularly competing in Cup, replaced Ricky Rudd, who stepped out of the sport after 2005.

While most teams look to younger drivers, the Woods went with the old pro, who likely will surrender the ride to Jon Wood after a season or two.

But Schrader races like he has found his own fountain of youth. Even when his Cup car is idle, he's racing in Busch or in the Craftsman Truck Series or at a dirt track. He raced his dirt car in Texas last week while the Cup circuit was idle.

"You've just got to want to do it," he said. "I don't have anything else I want to do."

He said that when the Cup offers quit coming, he won't stop racing.

"When the day comes that one of these kids bumps me out, then I'm going to run the next-best thing I can find at whatever level that is," he said. "This deal will end when I just can't climb in the car anymore or my buddies aren't strong enough to lift me anymore. This is what I want to do, and that's it."

NUMERICALLY SPEAKING
669: Career starts in Nextel Cup by Ken Schrader
96: Career Cup victories by Wood Brothers drivers
18: "NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers" who have driven for the Woods
7: Career victories by Schrader in NASCAR's elite divisions (four Cup, two Busch, one Truck)