Analysis: Milestone win the result of long journey for both Burton, Wood Brothers

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Long waits, low points and mighty struggles finally paid enormous dividends Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway.

Elation overwhelmed both the legendary Wood Brothers Racing team and its young driver Harrison Burton as the 23-year-old claimed his first NASCAR Cup Series victory at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, notching the organization’s 100th Cup Series win in the process.

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NASCAR Hall-of-Famers Leonard Wood and the late Glen Wood were the patriarchs of a stock-car racing team that has gone on to become the family’s legacy and business, a group of tight-knit Virginians who simply love racing, kinship and winning. That combination and lineage, along with Burton’s last-lap dash past Kyle Busch to win the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and surge the No. 21 Ford into the Cup Series Playoffs, has now produced victories in seven consecutive decades of NASCAR racing.

“I think that’s what I’m most proud of,” said Len Wood, son of Glen and the team’s current chief operations officer.

For as storied as the team is and as triumphant it was through the sport’s early decades, their struggles through the new millennium increased. Burton’s victory marks the program’s fourth win since 2000, following the footsteps of Elliott Sadler (Bristol, 2001), Trevor Bayne (Daytona 500, 2011) and Ryan Blaney (Pocono, 2017).

MORE: From 1 to 100: All drivers to win for Woods

Jon Wood, a former driver across the Cup, Xfinity and Craftsman Truck series, now serves as the team president and co-owner. And as he sat in the media center into the wee hours of Sunday morning, he couldn’t reflect on some of the team’s lows that led to Saturday night’s highs.

“We sat in these seats, I don’t remember, maybe 2016 when we didn’t get a charter,” Jon Wood said. “And we were talking about it, and it was the lowest point of lows. And we had to do it. We had to come here, face the music, and say, ‘I think we’ll be OK.’ And we are. You’re gonna make me cry, and I don’t cry. You know, that’s the part that’s just so surreal in this is sitting in the same seat and thinking of where we were and where we are now. You go from the lowest of lowest to just on top of it, and I don’t know what else to say.”

For the past three seasons, Burton has experienced his own woes. The son of NASCAR Hall of Fame nominee and current NBC Sports analyst Jeff Burton, Harrison scored an impressive four NASCAR Xfinity Series wins driving for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2020 before moving up to Cup with the Wood Brothers for his rookie campaign in 2022. His tenure at the sport’s top level has not reflected that same success, with just one top five and five top-10 finishes in his prior 96 starts in the No. 21 Ford. In July, Wood Brothers Racing announced Josh Berry will drive the No. 21 Ford in 2025 as the team parts ways with Burton at year’s end.

Saturday night, Burton pushed all that aside to beat Busch, an all-time great, head-to-head in overtime for his first win and inaugural appearance in the postseason, now one of just 13 drivers locked into the playoff grid entering the regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

“I struggle to put it into words for me, just the circumstances,” Burton said. “Obviously, the way the last three years have gone has not been the way I wanted to represent myself, the way I wanted to represent this team. And then to have the walls closing in on, you know, there’s a definite end to my time to get to drive this historic car, and then to find a way to win while those walls are closing in, to me, is really, really special. It almost makes the last three years worth it, but I would’ve much rather won before now.

“It’s just been so hard, and that’s the way it should be. The Cup Series is really, really hard. But to get the Wood Brothers’ 100th win, get my very first Cup win, it’s just really, really hard to put in words.”

What spoke volumes was the vast number of competitors who visited victory circle to congratulate Burton and the No. 21 team for their win. Crashed just laps before Burton claimed the checkered flag, Team Penske teammates Blaney and Joey Logano were some of the first on the scene to soak in Burton’s moment, standing aside while Burton doused his team in Coca-Cola and Busch Light while atop the driver’s door. The Wood Brothers team has been an affiliate of Penske’s for a number of years, ingraining Burton with the pair of Cup champions as well as friend and 2022 Daytona 500 champion Austin Cindric.

Logano looked on as Jeff Burton soaked in the celebration with his son, striking a chord with the two-time Cup champ as Logano’s hands draped over the shoulders of his 6-year-old son Hudson.

“His (Harrison’s) attitude is better than anyone I’ve ever met,” Logano told NASCAR.com. “People think I smile a lot. No one is happier than Harrison. I’m pretty proud of him right now. It’s cool to see his dad here. This is really cool. It almost brings tears to your eyes to see it.”

Blaney’s first career win at Pocono Raceway in 2017 marked win No. 99 for the Wood Brothers. The time spent with the organization and crew chief Jeremy Bullins — who led Burton’s team back to the promised land Saturday at Daytona — has tied Blaney to the family for life.

“This team was my family for three years,” Blaney told NASCAR.com. “I got my first win. A lot of guys on this team were on my team when I won at Pocono — Bullins, the crew chief; Grant (Hutchins), the engineer; Kirk (Almquist), the car chief, and many more. So it’s just neat to be able to come back, share it with them. A lot of these guys were part of 99 and 100. We’ve been waiting for the Wood Brothers to get 100 with Harrison since Pocono. So happy for Eddie (Wood, team CEO) and Len, Leonard. I know Glen would be incredibly proud. It’s a shame he can’t see it.

“But it’s just a cool moment to come and just hang out. I’ve been waiting so long. This is history and I couldn’t think of a better group. They really deserve it and Harrison deserves it.”

It wasn’t just Burton’s Penske friends who believed that. Among others, Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain — both pinned just beneath the provisional playoff elimination line thanks in large part due to Burton’s win — came to offer sincere moments of congratulations, understanding the magnitude of the moment for a driver who’s struggled so mightily — and underscoring who Burton is as a person as so many competitors opted to cheer for his success rather than rooting against it.

“I mean, you can’t help but pull for him,” Jon Wood said. “Like, that’s the thing about Harrison that I think a lot of our fan base just doesn’t see when you’re running bad. You don’t get a lot of coverage, you don’t get the chance to have that exposure and opportunity to show people who you are, and this is a great time to do that. And you see the real Harrison sitting here, and we’re so stoked to be with him. Again, you just can’t help but want the best for him. It’s just, he’s not like most of them.”

Alongside Burton through all his trials, tribulations and jubilations has been fiancée Jenna Petty, who rushed through the infield grass of the speedway with the No. 21 cohort to greet her future husband under the bright lights of NASCAR’s biggest stage. Burton lifted her into the air in elation on Daytona’s tri-oval grass, an exclamation point on the journey they’ve trudged through together.

“Just so surreal. I mean, that’s a moment that you dream about,” Petty told NASCAR.com. “You watch people do it week in and week out, and you want it so bad. You want it so bad for him, for your family and for everybody else, just to see that and see how much we still want it, and how much that he’s still working so hard for it. We are hard workers at heart, and we have always celebrated each other’s successes and been there for each other’s hardest times, and so that’s just such a huge moment for us over these years to get to celebrate this monumental win together.”

That support has, of course, been mutual in their eight years together. But the emotion with which Burton spoke when reflecting upon their relationship was tangible Saturday night.

“I look back on the things that I have screwed up at or the things I haven’t done right,” Burton said. “I always try to do right, I always try to do the right thing. Just even the way my Cup career has gone. I’ve never had someone that’s been committed to me the way that she’s been since we were 15 years old. We’ve been together from really forever for me — my entire high school, her entire college — I didn’t go to college, but her entire college. Just been through the failures, through the successes together. She never has changed the way she looks at me because of my finishing position, good or bad.

“First off, when we first started dating, she didn’t care. Now that we’re engaged, she’s invested in me and she helps me, motivates me to do the right thing. To share that moment with her is just amazing.”

In the end, it all circles back to family with this family-owned team. On television, Jeff Burton and Dale Jarrett are teammates as analysts for NBC Sports’ NASCAR coverage. On their track, their sons are the teammates now: Harrison Burton uses the help of spotter Jason Jarrett to navigate each race. And to emphasize the full-circle aura, Dale Jarrett’s first career win came with the Wood Brothers back in 1991, while Jeff Burton scored the victory in the 2000 summer race at Daytona. In Victory Lane to congratulate his friend, Dale Jarrett told NASCAR.com this was moment was “as special as anything I can remember in a long, long time.

“I mean to understand and know the Burton family and how much they put their heart and soul into this sport. I know how hard Harrison has worked to get to this. He’s an incredible young man, an incredible driver. And then of course the Wood Brothers, helping me get my first win and driving for them back in ‘91, it‘s just incredible to know that Harrison did this. And then my son Jason is the spotter for Harrison. We all have a stake in this in a little bit of a way, and it’s just so cool to see.”

From playing the role of neutral bystander in the TV booth to proud father, the smile couldn’t be wiped off Jeff Burton’s face from the time Harrison took to the checkered flag until the post-race press conference wrapped just after 1 a.m. ET on Sunday. In his 20-year career at the top level, “The Mayor” won 21 Cup races in his career, his last at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2008 when Harrison was 8 years old.

“It’s damn hard to get here,” Jeff Burton told NASCAR.com in Victory Lane. “And the last race I won was, hell, I don’t even remember how long ago it was. And to see what he’s gone through and how he’s conducted himself in what he’s been through is (what) I’m most proud of because you’ve never heard him once say a bad word about this team, about this group. Never once. Because that’s not who he is. He takes ownership.

“But he hasn’t quit fighting. And by the way, this team hasn’t quit fighting either. And it would be really easy to lay down and everybody quit on each other. Nobody’s done that. Here we are, and I’m so happy for him. It’s just a huge, huge night.”

The difficulty of accomplishing a single night of triumph in NASCAR is astonishing, evidenced by the loads of seemingly capable drivers who were never able to achieve that glory. The road to Harrison Burton’s first was grueling, but it was not without its lessons.

“This is shark-infested waters over here. He’s 23 years old,” Jeff Burton said. “This adversity will make him better. It’ll make him stronger. But sometimes, you’ve just got to go through it. And I told him this a few weeks ago — I said, ‘Harrison, you’re a better race-car driver than you’re allowing yourself to be at the moment.’ Nights like tonight are confidence-building and can change the game.”