At Daytona, outgoing wheelman Harrison Burton finally earns his first Cup Series win, in the process earning the Wood Brothers their long awaited 100th victory in stock car racing’s premier division.

“Burton’s crew chief sounding like a coach about to put in his 5th-string QB,” was the text I sent to some of my racing buddies last night, as the final restart of the Coke Zero 400 was about to light off. Audio of 23yr-old lame duck driver Harrison Burton receiving a “pep talk” from his crew chief Jeremy Bullins had just played on the NBC broadcast: “There’s a great opportunity here. You’re going to have to be very aggressive with taking a push…and blocking, and all the things you gotta do to win one of these, alright?”

To my ears, he sounded like the imaginary coach from my text messages, who loves his 5th-string QB but maybe wasn’t the most confident in his ability to send a hail mary right into his receiver’s breadbasket for the winning touchdown. With many of the night’s best-performing cars now out of the race due to a series of massive crashes and pile-ups, were we going to see another “unexpected winner” (slightly meaner translation: “is this guy gonna backdoor his way into the win?!”)

“Yes, copy. We’ll make it happen,” replied young Burton, making quite a statement, one that I doubted was going to prove true by the time the checkered flag waved. As it turns out, that wasn’t the only statement Burton was going to make on this muggy Saturday night in Daytona. Some five miles later, he’d made the biggest statement of his career and patched the last remaining hole in the roof of the house that Glen and Leonard Wood built: win number 100 for Wood Brothers Racing.

A part of NASCAR since its earliest days, the Wood Brothers team are an enigmatic anomaly in today’s hyper-corporate, cutthroat world of professional stock car racing. Not only do they hold the Guinness World Record for the longest continually-active NASCAR team, but they have also been exclusively loyal to Ford Motor Company for the entire duration of their stock car racing career. As Henry Ford’s great-grandson and company leader Edsel Ford II once said, “We consider Wood Brothers Racing part of our family, part of the Ford family.”

More than 20 of NASCAR’s all-time great drivers have driven for the Wood Brothers team, a list that includes names like Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Dale Jarrett, and defending Cup Series Champion Ryan Blaney. For eight consecutive decades the Wood Brothers team have won races at stock car racing’s highest level, but as the years have worn on the wins have been harder to find, coming far and few between particularly in the last few decades.

But while the dominant performances the team often showed in the 60’s and 70’s may truly be a thing of the past, the team’s place in the hearts of true stock car racing fans (and arguably any real American racing fan) can never be questioned. The same can be said of the extremely high regard that their fellow teams and racers hold them in; simply put, the Wood Brothers are a cherished, beloved NASCAR institution. The overwhelming sentiment in Daytona last night was one of joy for the Wood Brothers, a euphoric feeling that for many lasted well into the wee hours of the morning long after the last pieces of confetti had been swept up from victory lane.

As final Overtime restart lit off, Burton and his #21 Wood Brothers Ford battled side-by-side on the front row alongside 2-time NASCAR champion Kyle Busch in the Richard Childress Racing #8 Chevrolet, each driver receiving aggressive bumps from the cars drafting immediately behind them. To be sure, these shoves weren’t the product of the drivers behind attempting to shove either Burton or Busch to a win; rather, they were trying to cast them so far out front of the pack that they would lose the draft, slow, and become easy targets for a last-second pass for the win.

Initially, it looked like Toyota’s Christopher Bell had pushed Busch well enough that he would be able to command the front of the pack and navigate his way to a drought-breaking first win of the 2024 season. However, on the back stretch of the final lap, Burton’s outside lane built up a massive head of steam, with aggressive pushes by the very inexperienced Parker Retzlaff (in only his second Cup start!) that helped catapult Burton into the lead. Burton was aided by the fact that Busch had indeed been pushed too far ahead of the pack on the inside lane and lost touch with Bell, leaving him hung out to dry with no drafting help heading out of Turn 2 on the final lap.

With a huge chunk of the field decimated and retired due to repeated crashes (“The Big One” happened more than once, shocker) the surviving cars surged down into Turn 3 of the 2.5-mile superspeedway with Burton’s Dark Horse Ford Mustang rocketing into the lead, the call on NBC by legendary broadcaster Leigh Diffey sending chills up the spines of untold numbers of viewers who had already had their nerves shattered by the night’s roller coaster of on-track chaos and the attendant emotions:

“But here comes Harrison Burton! For the Wood Brothers! He’s being pushed by Parker Retzlaff! The 23-year-old from Huntersville, North Carolina is at the front of this field and may race his way into the playoffs! Busch goes low, Burton blocks, he gets back up, comes to the line….Jeff, your little boy has done it! Harrison Burton has won in Daytona!”

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

The “Jeff” that Diffey was referring to was of course none other than Harrison’s father, 21-time NASCAR Cup Series winner and NASCAR on NBC commentator Jeff Burton. Burton was an understandable vortex of emotion as he celebrated in the booth during Burton’s incredibly improbable run to the checkered flag, with Diffey’s iconic call providing the soundtrack for what has to be one of the most staggering moments we’ve seen in stock car racing over the last several years, at least since the Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” in 2022. Seeing Burton abandon his role as broadcaster to become simply a proud racing dad was one of the best moments of the night.

Short of a series championship, what else can you gift to a team like the Wood Brothers who’ve about done it all? After all, this is the team that invented the modern choreographed pit stop. Their factory affiliation with Ford Motor Company is second in longevity only to Scuderia Ferrari in Formula 1. They pitted for Jim Clark en route to his Indy 500 victory in 1965, something only they themselves and their Ford bosses knew would help Clark seal the win. Well, if you’re going to give them anything, especially on your way out as a driver with a fairly unremarkable and frustrating three years behind the wheel of their beloved #21, you could give them their 100th win.

Their 100th win. At Daytona. Burton had patched that hole in the Wood Brothers’ roof, the gap waiting to be filled by the team’s 100th Cup Series victory. And he did it at perhaps NASCAR’s most iconic home for stock car racing, a house that the Wood Brothers themselves helped to build so many decades go on the sands of Daytona Beach, long before the high-banks of the superspeedway that Burton somehow conquered last night.

The Wood Brothers’ on-track operation has been managed by Team Penske for several years now, and while the WBR charter isn’t technically a Penske property, one only needed to take in the post-race celebrations to see how much the 21 and the Wood Brothers are cherished inside that organization.

“I was jumping up and down,” said defending Cup Series Champion and driver of the #12 Team Penske Ford Ryan Blaney, who was wrecked out of the race late into the night after running near the front most of the night. “I was hooting and hollering….I was fanboying for Harrison and the Wood Brothers and that whole family,” adding that “You just got to be here to see it. I mean, I’m just so excited.” Blaney of course delivered the Wood Brothers their 99th win back in 2017 at Pocono Raceway, during his stint in the #21 before moving over to Penske’s #12.

“I think I’m wearing my Wood Brothers hat all week,” said Penske #2 driver and Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric on his X (Twitter) account. “Good things happen to good people. I am so proud of Harrison Burton.” Cindric could be seen on the cool-down lap saluting Burton as he pulled alongside him, no doubt relieved that the two young drivers had both survived the evening’s multiple pileups.

Driver of the #22 Penske Ford, 2-time Cup Series Champion Joey Logano, (who like Blaney was crashed out of the race late in the night due to no fault of his own) could also be seen in Victory Lane congratulating Burton and his crew for their nail-biting and career-defining win. Confetti. Smiles. Selfies. Beer. Camaraderie. While Burton’s career with the Wood Brothers will never be considered any kind of overwhelming success, at least at this point he gets to finish his time with the team carrying his head high and with dignity knowing he helped deliver them a truly milestone victory.

While this epic win was the 100th for the Wood Brothers, it was the first career Cup win for Burton, who entered the night as a 70-1 underdog. If a young man fighting to find his way in the Cup series and getting his first win behind the wheel of the #21 Ford while banging bumpers and doors at the end of a nail-biting race sounds familiar, it should. Because that’s exactly how 1999 NASCAR Champion and Hall of Famer-turned-NBC broadcaster Dale Jarrett won his first Cup series race in 1991, behind the wheel of the Wood Brothers’ #21 Citgo Ford at Michigan International Speedway. Narrowly edging out Davey Allison in the #28 Ford at the finish line by mere inches in one of the sport’s closest-ever finishes.

What the future holds for Harrison Burton at this point is still uncertain; we know that 34yr-old Cup Series rookie Josh Berry’s move to the #21 as Burton’s replacement has been met with much fanfare and optimism, and to be sure Burton has left a low bar for Berry to hurdle, last night notwithstanding. Hopefully Burton is able to find a ride in a lower series like Xfinity or Trucks where he can regain some confidence and return to winning races more frequently with an eye on an eventual return to Cup, much like Cole Custer has done recently. And can Berry deliver win #101, and perhaps even more? Only time will tell.

For now though, I say it is better to save those nagging questions for later in the week when the gates open at Darlington and focus now on simply celebrating this milestone moment for the Wood Brothers and their family, as the American motorsport royalty that they are and always will be.