The legendary Wood Brothers racing team will return to full time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing in 2016 with Ryan Blaney behind the wheel. Photo by Robert Laberge/NASCAR via Getty Images
Ryan Blaney will run the full 2016 schedule of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events for Wood Brothers Racing, the team and Ford Motor Company announced on Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“It has been a dream come true,” said Blaney, who is running a partial schedule for the Wood Brothers this season. “Growing up in the garage with my dad (Dave Blaney) racing and seeing what he used to do when I was a kid and now being able to be a part of a full season in the Cup series and be with a couple great organizations like the Wood Brothers and Ford will be amazing.”
Ford is solidly behind the legendary team’s expansion to a full schedule.
“We have been talking about a full season for as long as I can remember, and I want to thank Ford Motor Company and Raj Nair, the group vice president of worldwide product development for Ford Motor Company, for standing up and taking this on,” said Ford board member Edsel B. Ford II.
“It’s something the Wood Brothers deserve. They have proven themselves. This is a historic team, and they have been part of our family for 65 years, and that is very important to me personally.”
Jeremy Bullins will continue as Blaney’s crew chief as the team ramps up as a full-time operation.
“I’m looking forward to next year. I can’t thank Edsel and Dave (Pericak, global director, Ford Performance) and as Edsel said, Raj Nair. They made it happen. I believe we’ve been pretty good this year, and that gives us great momentum for next year. I can’t thank Motorcraft and the Quick Lane boys enough for what they do for this car on the race track, and I’m just really excited about it.”
In their 65-year history as NASCAR’s oldest continuously operating team, the Wood Brothers have accumulated 98 victories, the last coming with Trevor Bayne in the 2011 Daytona 500.
According to NASCAR officials, Blaney will be eligible to run for Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors in 2016 on a one-time exemption, even though he has 17 Sprint Cup starts to his credit, 15 this season. Blaney was not a candidate for the rookie award this year.
France Addresses On-Track Decorum, Chase Format
Though the line that separates acceptable racing practices from on-track over-the-line aggression may not be defined in bold paint like the line that marks the start and finish of a race, NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France contends that drivers know exactly where it is.
“Do you know how many drivers have come to see (NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director) Richard Buck in the last two weeks, three weeks, four weeks?,” France asked rhetorically during his annual “State of the Sport” press conference Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the site of Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ winner-take-all Championship Round race.
“Zero. Zero drivers have asked us for a clarification on the so-called line. And the reason that they don’t ask is they know.”
Questions about “the line” have arisen in the aftermath of Matt Kenseth’s purposeful wreck of Joey Logano at Martinsville. On Nov. 1, Kenseth, nine laps down at the time, knocked race leader Logano’s Ford into the turn 1 wall in retaliation for an incident at Kansas Speedway two weeks earlier, when Logano spun Kenseth for the win with fewer than five laps left.
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France, however, drew a clear distinction between the two incidents.
“They (drivers) know that circumstances late in a race, blocking — although I’m not a fan of blocking — that’s part of racing,” France said. “Blocking, contact, the short end of some of those exchanges that happen, are all part of it, and do not look to NASCAR to deal with that. They are part of racing.
“So the line is that if you intentionally, beyond part of racing — and there’s contact, and who came up, who came down, who was more aggressive than somebody else and so on — if somebody is just intentionally banzaiing into some situation with the sole purpose of taking somebody out, we’ll deal with that.
“We dealt with that in Martinsville, as a matter of fact. We’ll deal with that at all times.”
Kenseth, in fact, served a two-race suspension for the Martinsville incident. During the week between Phoenix and Kenseth’s impending return in Sunday’s season finale, France met with Kenseth and team owner Joe Gibbs individually at the Joe Gibbs Racing shop.
“We were very disappointed, as you know, with what happened in Martinsville,” France said. “We reacted to that. We were coming down here to a championship weekend, and I wanted to make sure that that matter was behind us with Matt, with Joe Gibbs, and so on.
“I’m assured that it is. We had a good conversation about what had happened and what the thinking was, or whatever you want to call Matt’s actions, and we talked about that. And it was a good conversation. Those kinds of conversations happen with us more frequently than not, so that’s not a surprising thing. I felt good coming out of those meetings.”
France also feels extremely positive about the format of the Chase itself.
“I was talking to (NASCAR Vice Chairman) Mike Helton the other day,” France said. “I said, ‘This might be the best thing we could have ever done for the quality of racing that we have ever done.’ And he said, ‘I think you’re right.’ And we both kidded ourselves, because he and I both were the ones that were, believe it or not, against going forward with this format for a number of years – advancing it to an elimination and winner-take-all scenario.
“But we got exactly what we want, which is great racing. Obviously, when you get great racing, you’re going to get great moments. We love great moments as anybody in sports does.”
NASCAR, Rise To Promote Diversity
NASCAR announced this week it has partnered with the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), a recently formed alliance of major sports leagues, associations, media networks and educators created to promote diversity and equality through sports.
NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France will help steer the new initiative, established by Miami Dolphins majority owner Stephen Ross, as a founding member of the RISE Board of Directors, serving alongside the commissioners of the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, and other top sports executives.
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