GLEN WOOD, Owner - No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion - HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN COMING TO DAYTONA? "I started coming here in 1947 and this makes the 65th straight year I’ve been down here.
I came here for the first time with Bernice’s dad and brother in 1947 in a little ’44 Ford. We just sort of started going to races back at home after the war, and I asked them about going down to Florida and they agreed. That was the start and we decided to go back the next year and I’ve done it every year since then. I’m lucky that I’ve felt good and haven’t been sick to where I couldn’t go during this time, but the other thing about coming down here is I’ve always driven. I’ve come down here before by plane for the Fourth of July race. I haven’t been to every one of those, but I have been here for all of the 500s."
HOW HAS THIS AREA CHANGED? "I remember when there wasn’t a track here and you’d come by 92 and see stumps rooted up out of the ground because it was just wilderness out here. It’s just like you see in a lot of places where there are swamps, palm trees and water. I’m sure Big Bill noticed that it was getting built up on the beach with houses right along where the track was, and that was a big change. There got to be several houses in that last two miles down to the lighthouse and it got so that they would have to tell them, ‘You can’t go out. If you’ve got to go anywhere, get out of here now and don’t come back until tonight.’"
YOU RACED ON THE BEACH. WHAT WAS IT LIKE? - "You would start down by the lighthouse and I can remember the first year I ran it there were more than 100 cars in the race. Can you imagine that many starting and then realizing that we’ve all got to slow down and make that turn at the North Turn (where the North Turn Restaurant is now). What they’d do is they would turn off the ocean and get back up on the highway right there and go two miles down toward the lighthouse. I don’t know how many of us ran over the bank down on the other end. One of the guys asked me one time, ‘How do you keep from running over the bank?’ First thing, when you would come over the last rise, you could see the turn so I would pump my brakes a little bit to see if I’ve got some. Back then, it was common to have a vibration break a brake line and you wouldn’t have any brakes, so that was the worst thing you could do going down in there without any brakes. So, I would pump the brakes and realize the turn was coming up and just slowed down. Curtis Turner was the best that ever was on the beach. I’d say he would throw it sideways for at least 100 feet and it was the prettiest drift you ever saw coming into the North Turn and he never did go wobbling out like a lot of them. He went out of there just as pretty every time. He is one of the legends over here from the very start. I didn’t drive quite like Curtis did and even though I’d have some drift once you got into it, he was just the one you had to watch. He enjoyed doing that on every dirt or half-mile track, but when it got serious and he needed to tighten up to keep things together, he’d drive it a little more stable."
