Offseason Spotlight: Woodard Stands Alone in Flying Tiger History After 4th Track Championship

Barre, VT – Winning a championship in racing, or any other sport, is the most difficult of achievements. It takes a combination of hard work, skill, and good luck that few teams will ever experience. For it to happen again…and again…and again puts you among increasingly elite company. In 2020, Waterbury Center, VT’s Jason Woodard joined a company of one by winning his fourth Lenny’s Shoe & Apparel Flying Tiger championship at Thunder Road.

In doing so, he broke a tie with fellow Tiger great Shawn Fleury, who won the title in 2005, 2006, and 2013 — the last of which came before Woodard’s first championship in 2014. Going into the season, Woodard and his entire #68VT All Metals Recycling Chevy team were hungry to earn that place in history.

“For the 2020 season, we had one huge goal, and that was to get the fourth championship underneath our belt,” Woodard said. “To break any record at Thunder Road is a big deal. I’m honored to be the person to be able to do it. To be able to actually pull it off is another story, but that was our goal, and we stuck to that goal all the way through.”

However, none of those title drives have been a walk in the park. The 2021 season was no exception. Like every Thunder Road racer, Woodard was dealt a stumbling block by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, forced to play the waiting game while seeing if and when the season would begin.

“It was like ‘hurry up, let’s go’, and then everything shut down,” Woodard recalled. “As a racer, you’re excited; if you’re not excited, you shouldn’t be racing. We were getting the cars ready as the COVID started hitting heavily, and then we didn’t know what was going to happen. At the end of the day, we were just hoping to get on the track and try these cars out. So we just waited it out and hoped for the best.”

Once the season went green on June 18, Woodard got off to a slow start. After three top-10 finishes, he was dealt a blow on July 9 by a mechanical failure during the Triple Crown Series opener. The resulting 23rd-place finish left him an uncharacteristic eighth in points.

“We want to out-prepare the competition and work on our cars all the time,” Woodard said. “But I broke a hub in the first 75-lapper, and it’s my own fault. I didn’t change the hub over the winter. The hub should have lasted longer, but it’s one of those things. I probably should have changed it anyway. So I take the responsibility, and I told the team that it was my fault it broke, and we learned from it. You’ve got to work on your car, you have to change your parts, and I just didn’t do it — and it bit me.”

Woodard showed his championship mettle, though, and rose above the adversity. In fact, he only needed one night to turn things around. The July 16 feature was halted early in the going due to rain. When the race resumed on July 24, Woodard sliced through the field to finish third. Later that night, he did even better, winning the double-point Midseason Championships. Just like that, Woodard was back atop the standings.

“I was behind a bit, and I knew what I had to do,” Woodard said while recapping the big night. “We went through the car front to rear and made sure every part was replaced that needed to be or that wasn’t replaced over the winter. We didn’t want any mechanical failures. Then we just really focused on that night. I had to. If I didn’t run well and capture all the points I could, it was going to be a real uphill battle after that. I was fortunate enough that the guys gave me a great car, and the line that I was in went, so I was able to move up through the field quickly. It was luck, really.  If I was in the other line, it wouldn’t have been the same outcome. I tell people that you can work on your car night and day, but you have to have the luck, too. We’ve been fortunate to have some luck on our side. Yeah, we’ve had a little bit of bad luck, but we’ve had more good luck than anything.”

That one night of success didn’t mean the fight was over. Woodard struggled to a 15th-place finish the next Sunday at the Community Bank N.A. 150. Following that event, there were 7 drivers within 27 points of the top spot. Although Woodard finished 4th and 3rd the next two weeks, his rivals hung right with him. With Michael Martin, Cameron Ouellette, Brandon Lanphear, and Logan Powers staring Woodard down, the championship was up for grabs.

Another factor in the equation was that Thunder Road saw the biggest weekly Flying Tiger fields in years. The division had at least 28 cars at every point-counting event, and on several occasions, cars were sent home during qualifying. Not only did that mean more competition on a weekly basis, but it also meant a bad night could hurt even more.

“It really made us focus,” Woodard said. “Everybody has a job on our team. We have a busy team with all the cars. At the end of the day, our kids take priority. My car’s important, for sure, and as we ran down to the end of the season, they might have given my car a little more priority because of the circumstances. But it comes back to everyone knowing their jobs and focusing on their job. My job is to drive the car. We have Scotty dealing with the tires, and certain guys dealing with the body, and other guys tuning the car. I told them, ‘we can’t beat ourselves. We just have to keep racing hard.’ I didn’t run away with it, and that tells you the level of competition in that division is great. As a racer, it’s more fun to have that battle right to the end. Yeah, you want to get a bug point lead, but when you really have to focus every single week and fight for it, it’s more rewarding at the end of the day.”

Woodard left the door open a crack when he had to settle for a 12th-place on August 13. However, none of his challengers could kick the door open, leaving Woodard a 12-point cushion over Martin at the top. The next week, Woodard beat all his rivals in both qualifying and the feature. A similar script played out the next week, and just like that, Woodard had a 36-point edge with two point-counting events to go.

The Labor Day event essentially played to a draw, with much of the field boxed in a thrilling side-by-side duel for the entire 40-lap distance. Entering the 100-lap finale on Barre Granite Association Championship Night, Woodard needed only a 17th-place finish to seal the record-breaking title. Still, like the racer he is, Woodard went for the win, eventually taking a third-place finish. Then he continued pedaling even after the points were no longer being tallied, finishing third in the Mini Milk Bowl and second in the Oxford Open.

On the face of it, Woodard’s championship numbers may not have shined as much as years past. The Midseason Championship was his only win, and he posted five top-10 and 10 top-10 finishes in 14 point-counting events. However, his 8.1 average finish certainly was impressive in a division averaging 30 cars per event. Woodard also added three podium finishes and 7 top-10s between non-point events and part-time competition at New Hampshire’s White Mountain Motorsports Park.

And in the end, the word “champion” matters more than any statistics. Woodard now can proudly call himself a four-time Thunder Road Flying Tiger champion. He also has two Triple Crown championships — one each at Thunder Road and White Mountain — and 11 career Thunder Road wins, cementing him as one of the most decorated Flying Tiger drivers in the modern era (1982-present).

“I’m honored to actually pull it off,” Woodard said. “Honestly, I dreamed about it — I had bad dreams and good dreams. Everybody wants to race at Thunder Road, and if you can be successful there, that means something in the racing world. We’re not going NASCAR — we’re just family racing teams. But we put our heart and soul into it, and man, it was exciting.

A lot has changed at Woodard Racing during its lifetime. When Woodard won his first title in 2014, it was a single-car team, and Woodard was in just his fourth year of racing (third in a Flying Tiger).

Now, the team has expanded to a four-car operation. Woodard’s daughter Kelsea has three seasons of Flying Tiger racing under her belt while son Tanner is preparing for his rookie Tiger season. The team also prepares a Tiger for family friend Bryan P. Wall. But between Woodard’s growth as a driver, his willingness to trust others, and finding the right people — along with the continued drive to compete and succeed — the team has remained on top even through the most hectic of summers.

“Back when I won my first championship, I don’t know if I was the best driver,” Woodard said. “I didn’t even win a race that season — I just was consistent. I think over time, I’ve come to understand the race car and the track so much more. I also now allow people to do certain things that I would try to do myself before, because I realized I can’t do everything. I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more patient, and when you put all that together, the result has been success. Every great team has great people, and if we didn’t have all the great people around us, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.

“Most of the people on our team have been doing it for many years and raced with other teams before they were with us,” Woodard continued. “I’m proud they want to be with us and feel that we have a good operation. They know that me, my kids, and Bryan Wall are all loyal to them, too. And let’s face it: they’re working for free. They do it for pride, and we race for pride, too, because we don’t make money at this. We’re in it for pride, memories, and enjoyment. To have the group that I have — they make it happen. To prepare four cars every week the right way, you need to have people on the job doing their job, and I have my job, and the kids have their jobs. You put it all together, the car rolls on the trailer, and we go to the track.”

With so much else going on at Woodard Racing, its patriarch is still undecided on his own racing plans for 2021. He intends to start the season and run all special events. However, Woodard made it clear that the cars of his kids and of Wall are the primary concern. While Woodard say he isn’t done yet as a driver, he also doesn’t want his personal goals and ambitions to detract from the efforts and development of the next generation in his racing family.

“If it’s going great, and everything is flowing nicely with the other cars, and they’re getting the support they need, then we’ll keep running,” Woodard said. “If me racing is jeopardizing my kids and how they’re running because I can’t focus on them enough and we can’t give them enough time, we’ll cut it short. We’re definitely going to race the (Triple Crown) races at Thunder Road and White Mountain, and if any other series or special events come along, we’ll do that as well, but otherwise there’s no set plan. The guys would love it if I ran for a fifth championship — we shall see.”