Jack Wood: Driver, No. 51 Rowdy Manufacturing Chevrolet
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Overview:
Event: UNOH 200, Race 20 of 23, 200 Laps- 55/55/90; 106.6 Miles
Location: Bristol Motor Speedway (0.533-mile oval)
Date/Broadcast: Sept. 14, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR 90
Double Shot of Jack at Bristol:
Jack Wood will make his 10th NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start of 2023 for Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) behind the wheel of the No. 51 Rowdy Manufacturing Chevrolet in Thursday night’s UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Wood has one prior start at “The Last Great Colosseum,” a 20th-place finish in last year’s race. He also has one ARCA Menards Series race under his belt at the half-mile oval, a 13th-place finish in 2021.
Wood has finished inside the top 10 in two of his nine Truck Series starts this season, including a career-best ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April. Across 44 career Truck Series starts, he has produced four laps led and three top-10 finishes. Last week at Kansas Speedway, he qualified fourth, led one lap and brought home a 16th-place finish.
The California native will be pulling double duty on Thursday night at Bristol as he will also be competing in the ARCA Menards Series race for Rev Racing as part of his limited schedule with the team. Wood has two top-five and five top-10 finishes with an average result of 10.6 across seven ARCA Menards Series starts this season. Across 16 career ARCA Menards Series starts he has recorded three top-five and nine top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 12.4.
The No. 51 team qualified for the owner’s playoffs after finishing seventh in the regular season owner point standings but did not make it out of the Round of 10. Across 19 starts in 2023, the team has recorded two wins, one pole, 170 laps led, seven top-five and 10 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 13.1. Owner-driver Kyle Busch recorded both of the 51 team’s victories winning the second race of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and most recently collecting his organization’s historic 100th win July 22 at Pocono Raceway.
Veteran crew chief Brian Pattie is calling the shots for the No. 51 team this year in his first season at KBM after spending the last 14 seasons atop the pit box in the NASCAR Cup Series. It took the veteran signal caller just two races to get his first win at KBM, winning with owner-driver Kyle Busch at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The duo won again in July at Pocono Raceway and collected KBM’s 100th career Truck Series victory. In the Cup Series, his drivers produced six wins, nine poles, 57 top-five and 131 top-10 finishes across 528 starts. The Florida native has also recorded 11 wins in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and now has three wins as a crew chief in the Truck Series. This will be Pattie’s first time calling the shots for a race on the concrete surface at Bristol in the Truck Series. His best result across 28 cup starts at Bristol was fourth with Clint Bowyer in 2012 and equaled by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in 2018.
Rowdy Manufacturing will serve as the primary sponsor on Wood’s No. 51 Silverado Thursday night. Rowdy Manufacturing offers precision machining of components from concept to completion across all industrial sectors including automotive, aerospace and NASCAR teams. Rowdy Manufacturing builds the chassis that KBM races as well as several other teams in the Truck Series including race-winning organizations Spire Motorsports and Henderson Motorsports. The same attention to detail that has made Rowdy Manufacturing owner Kyle Busch a two-time Cup Series champion goes into every component that comes out of his organization’s Mooresville, N.C. facility.
Jack Wood, Driver Q&A:
Where does Bristol rank on your list of favorite tracks
“I’ve run there a couple times. It’s a pretty cool venue, it’s tough to race around, it’s tough to pass there. I think our trucks are going to be good. For me, I am just mentally preparing on how I’m going to run up front and what I want to do on restarts. Running both the truck race and ARCA race will be a long day for me running 400 laps. I’m just trying to get prepared to go out and have ourselves a good weekend.”
How beneficial will it be to you to run the ARCA race before the Truck Series race?
“Hopefully it will be very beneficial. I think every time I’ve done it this year it has helped me knock the rust off, especially at a track that I haven’t been to since last year. Hopefully the ARCA car will be good, and we can go out and make laps and run up front the whole race. It’s really just to compliment what we’re doing in the truck and if it can help us just five percent than it’s more than worth it.”
What are your goals for the rest of the season?
“I just want to put together four solid races to end the year on a high note. I think we just need to turn the tide. We’ve shown speed most weeks and there’s just things that have happened that have kept us from reaching our full potential with our finishes — some of it being my own doing and some of them random things that happen like a pit gun breaking in the middle of a stop last week.”
Jack Wood Career Highlights:
- Has produced three top-10 finishes across 44 career starts in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Posted a series-best ninth-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in April.
- Has compiled 14 laps led, three top-five and nine top-10 finishes across 16 career ARCA Menards Series events.
- Has totaled three top-five and eight top-10 finishes across 12 career starts in the ARCA Menards West Series.
- Compiled one top-five and three top-10 finishes across 24 starts in the SRL Spears Southwest Tour from 2017 to 2021.
- Jack Wood’s No. 51 Rowdy Manufacturing Chevrolet Silverado RST:
KBM-62: The No. 51 Rowdy Manufacturing team will unload KBM-62 for Thursday night’s race at Bristol. In its most recent outing, this Chevrolet finished 18th with Wood behind the wheel at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. KBM owner-driver Kyle Busch has finished second with this chassis twice, earlier this year at Martinsville Speedway and in 2021 at Richmond Raceway.
KBM Notes of Interest:
- KBM drivers have collected four wins, five poles, 628 laps led, 11 top-five and 18 top-10 finishes resulting in an average finish of 12.5 across 34 starts at Bristol. Owner-driver Kyle Busch collected the first three of his organization’s victories at the half-mile oval, winning the Craftsman Truck Series race as a part of his historic Bristol Sweeps in 2010 and 2017 and he also won the 2013 event. Chandler Smith picked up the organization’s most recent win in 2022.
- KBM holds the Craftsman Truck Series records for most career wins (100) and most wins in a single season (14 in 2014). Kyle Busch picked up his organization’s first-ever win at Nashville Superspeedway in April of 2010 and also picked up its 100th Truck Series victory at Pocono Raceway in July of 2023. In addition to collecting a series-record seven owner’s championships, the organization has produced two championship-winning drivers: Erik Jones (2015) and Christopher Bell (2017).
- With 42 victories, the No. 51 is the winningest number in KBM’s Truck Series fleet.
