WOOD BROTHERS/JTG TEAM RETURNS TO “HOME TRACK” OF MARTINSVILLE

The Wood Brothers/JTG race team will be returning to their adopted “home track” of Martinsville Speedway this Sunday for the Subway 500 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup event. Bill Elliott is set to return to the seat of the No. 21 Little Debbie Ford at the half-mile track. Martinsville, Virginia is only about a 30-minute drive from the legendary Wood Brothers home base of Stuart, Virginia.

The team will be bringing chassis number C-7 for this weekend’s events at Martinsville. This is a COT race for the Nextel Cup Series and the Wood Brothers/JTG team has previously used this chassis twice this year—at both road course events in Sonoma, California and Watkins Glen, New York. The team finished in 19th and 14th places respectively in those events.

Bill Elliott’s record at Martinsville Speedway is both long and distinguished. He has 42 total starts at the half-mile track, including three top-five finishes and 13 top-10 efforts along the way. He’s also led 241 laps of competition. He has 11 top-10 starting positions for events there, including an outside pole position coming during Elliott’s 1988 Championship season.

The Wood Brothers/JTG team will have a guaranteed starting position in the field this weekend in light of Bill Elliott’s past champions provisional. In 15 starts for the No. 21 team in 2007, Elliott has only previously used one of his available six. The team will be looking to do all it can to pick up some points on their nearest competitors, as they have fallen back out of the top-35 in owner points. They are now 109 points outside looking in as they head into this weekend’s event.

WHAT THE TEAM HAS TO SAY:
Bill Elliott, Driver of the No. 21 Little Debbie Ford:
“We’ll have to see just how well we can set up this car this weekend. I know that the guys took our primary to test this week and shook it down, so hopefully we’ll have a bit of a head start on practice come Friday. I hope I can get the guys a good finish—after Charlotte, we inherited a bit of a point deficit that we have to take care of. I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble and we’ll see how it all shakes out.”

Gene Nead, Crew Chief of the No. 21 Little Debbie Ford:
“I think we have the car a long way towards being ready. It’s not every week that we have the time to go shake down the car, but we got some great baseline runs on Monday that we can use to our advantage. I thought everybody worked very well together last week at Charlotte—we just don’t have a result to show for it. I hope for everyone’s sake that we can come together and change that this weekend at Martinsville. There’s a lot of history here and the Wood Brothers have always considered this their home track.”

FAST & FUN FACTS: