Roller Coaster; How the Rudd/Wood Brothers deal happened.(Winston Cup deal between Wood Brothers and Ricky Rudd and Motorcraft)(Brief Article)

You don't survive 50 NASCAR seasons without some resolve. You don't win 118 poles and 97 races, and have a dozen hall-of-fame drivers without knowing oil from water. Mostly, you don't sustain a family legacy by crying, ``No mas'' each time something goes wrong.

So it was that the Wood Brothers finally landed Ricky Rudd and Motorcraft to a three-year Winston Cup deal. All parties involved endured three roller-coaster months before the deal was sealed in a matter of hours. Only then did team co-owners Eddie and Len Wood smile like they'd won the lottery. Which, in a sense, they had.

``This is a dream come true for us,'' Eddie said moments after Rudd signed up between the Michigan and Bristol weekends. ``We came out of this about as well as we possibly could.''

The Wood Brothers of Stuart, Virginia, are NASCAR's second-oldest team and one of its most revered. It debuted in 1953, three years after Richmond, Virginia, native Junie Donlavey fielded cars in what became Winston Cup. But unlike Donlavey-a prince of a man, but overmatched this day and age-the Woods have enjoyed great success.

Among their drivers: Curtis Turner, Joe Weatherly, Cale Yarborough, Tiny Lund, Junior Johnson, Marvin Panch, Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Fred Lorenzen, Donnie Allison, A.J. Foyt, David Pearson, Neil Bonnett, Buddy Baker, Kyle Petty and Dale Jarrett. They've won just about everything, from dirt quarter-miles to paved superspeedways, from road courses to ovals, from long-forgotten events to the Daytona 500.

But the 1990s were hard on them, and this decade hasn't been much better. The Woods won 30 races in the 1960s and 54 more in the 1970s, then nine in the 1980s. Dale Jarrett and Morgan Shepherd each won once for them in the 1990s. Elliott Sadler was their last winner, in April 2001 at Bristol. Even so, it was a stunner when he asked in May to be turned loose in the fall to accept another ride.

As for Rudd, things got sticky in June as he worked on his contract extension with Robert Yates Racing. The snag was less about money and more about whether he'd have crew chief Michael McSwain another year. Rudd knew Sadler was coming aboard, but didn't think the No. 28 Havoline team should suffer. Besides, weren't Sadler and M&M's going to be a third team? Surely Yates wouldn't dump the 28/Havoline Ford team that Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan and Rudd had made so potent.