Stone, Woods & Cook

This team was a sensation in drag racing in the mid-1960s. It is amost impossible to underestimate their popularity and influence during that era, although the fact that Stone and Woods were black was frequently unknown to the fans, who often only saw the white driver, Doug Cook. I don't think that I was even aware as a 13 yr old that black people were behind this car, but one of my good friends at the time was an inveterate fan of theirs and now I wonder if their race might have been a factor in his enthusiasm. Tim Woods owned Woods Construction in south central Los Angeles and provided the inspiration and financing for the team. Stone was a talented race mechanic. Under their guidance they became the first African American owned and managed team to rise to the top of motor racing. That is not to say that they didn't encounter racial prejudice, from spectators and even fellow racers, but they were mostly known as the team to beat in the fiercely competitive drag racing scene of the mid-'60s. Their car, a 1941 Willys with, during their heyday, a supercharged Oldsmobile engine, became in itself a racing icon, so popular that Revell produced a model of it that you can still buy 40-odd years later, and knowledgeable drag race fans to this day revere the names Stone, Woods and Cook.

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