Legendary Radial Tire Racer Mark “Woody” Woodruff Lays Down A Career Number In His Signature Corvette

Not long after I got into the trackside photography world, I fell in love with radial racing. Being born and raised here in Alabama, small tire racing has always been a big part of my life, with the ORSCA series starting literally at my home track, Huntsville Dragway.

One of the first cars that got my attention in radial racing was Mark “Woody” Woodruff’s gorgeous blue 1967 Corvette. In a world of beautiful hotrods, Woody’s Vette stood out as one of the best looking cars, and the fact that it was one of the quickest cars in the class at the time only made it that much more appealing. Unfortunately, just as I was getting to know Mark and his crew, the car was destroyed in a pre-race testing crash at South Georgia Motorsports Park just before Lights Out 5. Through no fault of his own, Woody’s car was completely destroyed when the driver in the other lane got out of shape and crossed over into Mark’s lane, collecting the ’67 in the process.

Woody came back shortly after with a gorgeous C6 Corvette that was actually more suited to keep up with the evolution of Radial vs the World, and has worked hard over the past 5 years with the help of his friends and crew to keep the slick black Corvette in the hunt as the class has continued to grow and change.

A huge part of the reason Mark is so well liked within the radial racing community is his generosity and knack for always having exactly what any racer with a broken part needs on hand. For years now, the first stop on the “oh crap, I need a part” scramble through the pits is Woody’s pit. In fact, he’s become so well known for having pretty much anything you could think of in his trailer that there are “Woodymart” stickers flowing around the pits.

While the black car has always ran well, this weekend at Lights Out X, Woodruff and crew laid down a stellar run, posting a new personal best of 3.65 seconds and establishing Mark as one of the quickest radial tired cars in history, and nearly every driver in the class was cheering when it happened. That’s the kind of response you get when you’ve established yourself as one of the genuinely nicest guys in all of drag racing.

We here at Speed Society couldn’t be prouder to see Woody putting up these huge numbers, and with Sweet Sixteen II right around the corner, they couldn’t come at a better time. Things could really get interesting come late March when the baddest small tire doorslammers on the planet reconvene at SGMP to take their shot at $101,000!