Wood Brothers tap into Indy history, reveal retro No. 21 Ford for Darlington Throwback Weekend

Wood Brothers tap into Indy history, reveal retro No. 21 Ford for Darlington Throwback Weekend

The Wood Brothers’ 75th anniversary season was already primed to be cause for celebration, well before Josh Berry’s stirring triumph last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway added another page to the lore of NASCAR’s most veteran team. As the family-run organization forges into the future, an opportunity to honor another great moment in the team’s history is taking shape, this time at another legendary venue.

The Wood Brothers unveiled a brilliant retro-themed paint scheme Thursday morning at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, displaying a green-and-yellow No. 21 Mustang that the team will race during Throwback Weekend on April 5-6 at Darlington Raceway. The vintage design makes a nod to the Ford-powered Lotus driven to victory by Jim Clark in the 1965 Indianapolis 500.

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The Wood Brothers played a pivotal role in that Indy win some 60 years ago, bringing their pit-stop choreography and ingenuity to the Brickyard and exposing their methods to a new motorsports audience. Perhaps taking a cue from Indy’s heritage, Darlington played host to NASCAR’s first 500-mile race in 1950, and while IndyCars only raced there for a handful of years in the track’s infancy, the thought of a crisp Lotus paint scheme … er, livery … hurtling through the turns at the track “Too Tough to Tame” is a delicious contrast of racing history books.

“I call them tribute schemes, but we’ve been looking for every opportunity to do those, and Darlington being throwback city, it just made sense to do it there,” says Jon Wood, team president. “You know, it’s easy to maybe debate the appropriateness of an Indy 500 paint scheme at Darlington, but does it really matter? Darlington is about celebrating the history of the sport, and this is entirely appropriate in that aspect, so it seemed like it was a good fit, and that’s where we are.”