'Tiny' delivered huge win for Woods at Daytona
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: A look at some of the people who shaped the sport

Tiny Lund playfully lifts Rex White following Lund's improbable victory in the 1963 Daytona 500.

Mention the 1963 Daytona 500 to old-time NASCAR fans and you'll get a two-word response - "Tiny" Lund.

The story of that race is legendary. DeWayne Louis "Tiny" Lund initially wasn't supposed to be in the winning Wood Brothers Ford that year at Daytona. That ride belonged to Marvin Panch. But 10 days before the race, Panch wrecked a Maserati during a sports-car race at Daytona, and Lund was one of the bystanders who pulled him from the burning wreckage - a feat that earned Lund a Carnegie Medal of Honor and a ride in the Woods' No. 21.

But for most of that Speedweeks, it looked like a Chevrolet would

wind up in Victory Lane

at the end of the 500.

Chevy-driving Rex White, the 1960 champion of the Cup series, said the best chance he ever had of winning the sport's biggest race was in '63.

"All the Chevys were fast," White said. "Fords were suffering from a lack of horsepower, compared to the Chevys."

When the race started, White's No. 4 ran like the wind, but a leaking head gasket in his powerful engine became his undoing. Still, even after making an unscheduled pit stop to add water to his radiator, he stormed back into the lead, passing Lund and others with ease.

"I passed Tiny a couple of times," White said. "One time I just motored by him. He couldn't even catch the draft."

White's leaking gasket eventually relegated him to a 14thplace finish.

Lund, on the other hand, was able to make up for his lack of speed with the brilliant pit strategy of his team, led by Glen and Leonard Wood.

The Woods devised a gasmileage strategy that worked to perfection.

"We knew we could run 42 laps on a tank of gas," Leonard Wood recalled last week. When a caution flag flew just shy of the 100-mile mark, the Woods knew they could finish the race with just four more stops if they pitted every 40 laps or so.

The team never even changed tires to save time on pit stops and instructed Lund to draft with other drivers and save fuel.

Toward the end of the race, the leaders, one by one, began running low on fuel and making pit stops.

"We knew we had it then," Wood said. "It was just a matter of when they came down pit road."

When Ned Jarrett stopped for gas with eight laps to go, Lund took the lead and never looked back. But the Woods had one last worry.

"We were wanting Tiny to draft and save fuel, but with about 10 laps to go, he began dicing it up," Wood said. "But he had plenty of gas, and it was a big win for us."

White said he was as happy as anyone with the storybook finish.

"I was glad to see Tiny win the race, and I was happy for Glen and Leonard Wood," White said.

Lund, a short-track specialist, won four other times on NASCAR's elite circuit and raced on and off in Cup until 1975 when he was killed in a crash at Talladega Superspeedway.

The five-foot-three-inch White remembered the sixfoot five-inch Lund as being hard on equipment on the track but also as a fun-loving prankster who loved to fish and hunt.

"Tiny was like an overgrown kid," he said.

- Rick Minter, Cox News Service