Racer - May 2016 SKIP BARBER

DAVID PEARSON

smoke out the window at Baker and pulled away to victory by leading the final 12 laps. “The Silver Fox” had struck again...

It was vintage Pearson – messing with another driver in the heat of battle and, more importantly, waiting until the right time in the race to strike. Leonard Wood, Eddie’s uncle and Pearson’s chief mechanic during the team’s glory years, saw it often.

“He always made the comment, ‘If you run as hard as you can go all day, you’re going to make a mistake,’” recalls Leonard.

“Back in those days, the cars would fall out
a lot more, so he would bide his time and
wait until about half distance, when a lot
of the cars had already fallen out. That’s
when he’d start going to the front – if he
wasn’t already in front, that is.”
And Pearson went to the front an
awful lot in a career that saw him win

105 NASCAR premier series races and three championships in just 574 starts. Pearson’s 18. 3 percent win average is better than that of chief rival Richard Petty, whose 200 victories in 1,184 starts gave him a 16. 9 win percentage.

As smart and successful as Pearson
was on the track, he never was wowed by
the trappings of stardom and fame like so
t was April 1976 and Buddy Baker’s
Ford was dominating at Darlington
Raceway, leading 205 of 367 laps in the
Rebel 500. But as the laps wound down,
car owner Bud Moore was on the radio,
urgently warning Baker that David
Pearson was in his rearview mirror and
closing fast in his all-conquering Wood
Brothers Racing No. 21 Mercury.

“He’d been telling Buddy all along, ‘He’s coming, he’s coming,’” says Wood Brothers co-owner Eddie Wood about the messages Moore was sending his driver.

“And Buddy was, ‘Naw, I think I’ve got
him. I’m OK today. I got it covered.’”
Baker, unfortunately, was guilty of a
little bit of irrational exuberance. Not
only did Pearson catch Baker on the
frontstretch on Lap 356, but as he pulled
alongside him, Pearson lit a cigarette, blew

With 43 wins from 143 starts for David Pearson and the Wood Brothers in a little over seven years together, it remains NASCAR’s most potent combination. Pearson puts it down to the Woods understanding what he wanted in a car, and he taking care of the rest.