The No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford Fusion, with Ryan Blaney at the wheel, will hit the track at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend with a new look representing technical partner SKF, the leading global supplier of friction-reducing solutions for industrial and transportation applications.
The New Hampshire 301 will be SKF’s first of three appearances on the iconic No. 21 Fusion this season, while Blaney will be returning to a familiar partner, one that has special meaning to him.
Last year, SKF partnered with Blaney as he made his first-ever Sprint Cup start at Kansas Speedway, where he finished 27th. SKF returned later that season to Blaney’s No. 12 Ford Fusion at Talladega where he started 4th, led 15 laps and finished 22nd.
“I am excited to have the SKF colors back on my car,” Blaney said. “I made my Sprint Cup debut with SKF on the car at Kansas last year, and we ran really well. This weekend will be my first Cup race at New Hampshire, but I now have more laps in a Cup car. I’m looking forward to giving SKF a good solid run.”
Ryan’s car debuts a theme which SKF supports through it participation in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM.org). “Manufacturing Makes America Strong” reinforces the importance of modern industry to providing good-paying, high skill jobs. It also helps promote this year’s MFGDAY.com in which participating plants open their doors on October 3rd to highlight their high-tech career opportunities.
SKF, like the Wood Brothers, has a rich racing heritage, with sponsorships at all levels of motorsports. For more than 17 years, SKF has partnered with NASCAR as both a sponsor and technical partner. More recently, the past four years have been spent as both a sponsor and technical partner with Team Penske, who also have a technical alliance with the Wood Brothers since the beginning of this 2015 season.
SKF has helped Team Penske achieve multiple wins across NASCAR’s Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series. Beyond NASCAR racing, SKF provides their knowledge and technical expertise to the No. 3 of Helio Castroneves in the Verizon IndyCar Series and the Scuderia Ferrari Racing team of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen in the Formula 1 Series.
Like the Wood Brothers, SKF has connections to the pioneering days of auto racing. The Woods ran their first Sprint Cup race in 1953 and were racing even before that.
Years earlier, Chicago Rawhide, the sealing pioneer which SKF purchased in 1990, sponsored cars in the Indianapolis 500. In 1937, Herb Ardinger started on the front row in the No. 54 Chicago Rawhide Offy SC.
For Eddie Wood, co-owner of the No. 21 Ford Fusion, returning to New Hampshire for the first time since 2008 is a refreshing development.
“We’re very excited to be returning to New Hampshire. We’ve run well there, finished second a couple of times and would love to give SKF a win.” Wood said.
“We’ve had fast cars the past two weeks but haven’t gotten to show it because rain washed out qualifying at Daytona and Kentucky. We’re going to Loudon expecting sunshine all weekend and a fast SKF Ford Fusion.”
SKF will return to the No. 21 Fusion for the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Aug. 22 and the MyAfibStory.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway on Sept. 20.
Qualifying for the New Hampshire 301 is set for Friday, July 17 at 4:45 p.m. eastern time, and the race is scheduled to start just after 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 19 with TV coverage on NBCSN.
About SKF
SKF, the Knowledge Engineering Company, manufactures bearings, seals, mechatronics, and lubrication systems. The company also offers a broad scope of services that include technical support; maintenance and reliability services; engineering consulting; and training. Other SKF Group Brands include Lincoln Industrial, specializing in centralized lubrication systems, Kaydon and Cooper specialty bearings, and ACE motion control products. Today the SKF Group has +50 production facilities in North America and is present in more than 130 countries, with 15,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2014 were $8.5 billion and the number of employees was 48,593. For more information about SKF and its complete range of products and services, visit www.skf.com.
