Latest news with #JonWood
BBC News
14 hours ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Leeds Parents 'fearful' of Little Owls nursery privatisation
Parents have said they are "fearful" for the future of seven council-run nurseries that could be taken over by schools or private year, Leeds City Council closed three of its Little Owls sites and said it would pull out of running 12 others as part of its drive to address a budget shortfall of £273m over five month, however, parents received letters confirming five of the sites would now remain under council campaigners welcomed the partial U-turn, parent Jon Wood said putting any of the remaining nurseries into private ownership would be "absolute cultural vandalism". "It is the poorest that suffer," said the father-of-one. "Council-run nurseries are a lot cheaper than private-run nurseries."We are going through a cost of living crisis, our incomes are not matching outgoings, it is going to prevent parents being able to work."For the past three years, Mr Wood's son has attended a Little Owls nursery which the council said could be taken over by private to assume control have been submitted by private providers for the Bramley, Meanwood, Rothwell and Shepherds Lane sites. "We are fearful it is going to be some big chain that is just not going to provide the same level of care," said Mr Wood."It is not fair on families; it is a deprived area where good, affordable childcare is absolutely essential. "To put these nurseries into private ownership, is just absolute cultural vandalism". Parent Kath Owen said she was worried about losing a connection to the local area."The Little Owls nurseries are part of the support systems for families," said the 45-year-old."I will be really sad to see it sold off because we are going to lose more than something that could be measured on a balance sheet."The St Mary's Hunslet, Parklands and Hawksworth Wood Little Owls sites are currently co-located with to Leeds City Council, discussions as to whether the schools will take over management of the sites are Dalton, from the Save Little Owls Nurseries campaign, urged the council to fight harder to keep control of all the remaining father-of-one, whose child attends a nursery run by the council, said: "If there is not sufficient money to do that, campaign for that money, call for that money off the government."We will continue to challenge this because as parents you want the best quality education and childcare and having seen how much my son progressed at Little Owls you do not want that being taken away." A council spokesperson said no suitable alternative providers had been found for five of the nurseries: Burley Park, City & Holbeck, Hunslet Rylestone, Osmondthorpe and Quarry a result, it would continue to operate these sites to ensure "sufficient high-quality childcare places in these areas".Irshad and Fareen Hassan said it was a "relief" to know their daughter's nursery would continue to be operated by the council."It was very uncertain" Mrs Hassan said."I was really depressed at a point."It was fantastic news".Mr Hassan added: "The moment [his daughter] started going [to nursery] we could see a significant development in her."She gained confidence, loves going and she reckons Little Owls is her second home."Leeds City Council said it wanted to "reassure families and staff that in the event discussions do not reach a satisfactory conclusion, the council's default position is to retain direct delivery of these settings."We would like to once again thank parents, carers and staff for their support and patience through this process and reaffirm our commitment that all ongoing provision continues to be child-centred and ensures the most vulnerable children in the city are well catered for." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Scotsman
16-05-2025
- Climate
- Scotsman
Stunning St Andrews Old Course Aurora Borealis image taken by greenkeeper is up for grabs for £100
Keen photographer Jon Wood captured his breathtaking snap in the middle of the night Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A stunning photograph of the Aurora Borealis over the Old Course in St Andrews is being offered to golf collectors around the world, with part of the proceeds going to a greenkeepers' charity. The photograph was taken by Jon Wood, the current Keeper of the Green at the most famous venue in golf, and a keen amateur photographer. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He captured what has been called 'The Keeper's Lights' during a rare and specifically vivid display of the Aurora Borealis in the middle of the night in May 2024. Jon Wood's stunning St Andrews image is being offered to golf collectors | St Andrews Links Trust His special image captures the Northern Lights above the iconic Swilcan Bridge, with the historic Old Course and town of St Andrews in the background. In celebration of its one-year anniversary, St Andrews Links Trust, in collaboration with Wood, has produced a collector's edition of 100 mounted prints, each individually signed and numbered by the photographer. 'I've always thought, wouldn't it be great to have a shot of the aurora over the Swilcan Bridge with the town in the background,' said Wood, who is Course Manager for the Old, New and Jubilee courses at St Andrews Links. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It was incredible to watch it unfold that evening and to capture that moment was really special. I stayed watching all the way through until sunrise. When I posted the picture last year, the response was amazing.' Greenkeepers' charity to receive part of proceeds The exclusive opportunity to purchase one of the most iconic photos ever taken at St Andrews, where The Open has been held a record 30 times and is returning in 2027, is available now via an online ballot, closing at midnight on 18 May. Selected entrants will be able to purchase a print for £100. All proceeds from this print will be reinvested into the preservation of St Andrews Links, with five per cent of the revenue generated being donated to the Greenkeepers Benevolent Fund – the official charity of BIGGA (The British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association)/ Jon Wood, the Keeper of the Green at St Andrews, is also a keen amateur photographer and captured his stunning image in the middle of the night | St Andrews Links Trust 'To be able to combine my love of photography and my passion for the Old Course by releasing this print is fantastic,' added Wood. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It makes you feel good to know that you've captured something that people really like and I'm delighted the print will be sold to help preserve the home of golf and to benefit such a great charity as the Greenkeepers Benevolent Fund.'
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
The Backstory on Wood Brothers' Amazing 1965 Lotus Indy 500 Livery for NASCAR Darlington
Wood Brothers Racing and driver Josh Berry are turning to the 1965 Indianapolis 500 for this year's Darlington NASCAR livery. Jim Clark was no ordinary Indy 500 winner, and the Wood Brothers and Ford played a key role in that race win for Lotus. This was no ordinary Indy 500 winner, and the Wood Brothers played a key role in that race. Throwback Weekend at Darlington has become one of the highlights of the NASCAR season as teams celebrate their history with throwback liveries of great cars and great seasons past. This year, Wood Brothers Racing and driver Josh Berry are turning to the 1965 Indianapolis 500 of all things for its livery for the April 5-6 weekend. And, just like Jim Clark's '65 race to glory for Lotus on the bricks of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, this year's Wood Brothers Ford livery for Darlington will have fans and competitors alike doing double takes. This was no ordinary Indy 500 winner, and the Wood Brothers played a key role in that race. The Wood Brothers race team worked as the pit crew for the Lotus entry. Ford power was on that Lotus entry and helped developed faster ways to fuel the car. On his way to the first rear-engine car win at the 500, Clark was able to make unheard-of-at-the-time sub-20 second pit stops. "That particular event is probably one of the most proudest moments in my dad Glen Wood and my uncles' history," team co-owner Eddie Wood said. "They always talk about that day, that car and how the Lotus factory team and the Ford factory team that did the engine welcomed them up there. There were afraid they were coming from a different world. The really didn't know how they would be accepted." The idea of a throwback livery honoring the 1965 Indy 500 effort has been on the back burner for the past year or so, said Wood Brothers President Jon Wood. Wood said that originally the idea was to run an Indy throwback livery at the Brickyard 400, but it just never worked out. "With this year being the 75th year of Wood Brothers Racing and the 60th anniversary of that 500 win, it just seemed to make sense," Jon Wood said of this year's throwback entry. "Darlington comes along and there were some conflicting ideas. Is an open-wheel throwback—does that make sense for Darlington? "Really, Darlington is a celebration of not only NASCAR's past but just motorsports' past. And I think we would have been closed-minded to stick with just stock car throwbacks. So this was a fun one, and I think it celebrates all different disciplines of motorsports and it branches out more international that what we've really done in the past." Jon Wood said one of the biggest hurdles in using the Lotus livery was getting the rights to the livery from Lotus. For that, Wood was put in touch with Clive Chapman, who is the son of Lotus founder and engineer Colin Chapman. Clive is still active in the preservation of everything Lotus. Matt Anderson, a curator at the Henry Ford Museum, helped Wood make the connection. A back-and-forth of emails led to a phone call where Wood was finally able to ask permission to use the Lotus colors and livery. "He speaks very, fine, proper England English and I'm fluent in hillbilly," Wood joked. "The gap there, even though we spoke the same language, it was really, really difficult for me to say we were planning a tribute scheme, not a throwback, but a tribute scheme for a revival race. I'm trying to make words that he understands, and the whole time he's very, very quiet. "I left the conversation feeling a little uncomfortable that he didn't fully understand what we were trying to do." Another email each way and, fortunately for the Wood Brothers and NASCAR fans, it was a done deal. This was no ordinary Indy 500 winner, and the Wood Brothers played a key role in that race. "Throwback Weekend is always so much fun, and you get to honor the history of the sport in general," Berry said. "This is a great way for us to tell the story of the history of motorsports and honor these amazing stories like this one. "It's a great way for us to give a little back and remind people of how we got here, and give guys like the Wood Brothers the opportunity to tell these amazing stories."
New York Times
17-03-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
Las Vegas takeaways: Wood Brothers' statement, Josh Berry's success, Bubba's new approach
NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — When Wood Brothers Racing had just two top-five finishes in three years, few people linked the organization with Team Penske. After all, Penske won the championship in all three of those seasons while the Wood Brothers' No. 21 car was mostly noncompetitive despite being in an alliance together. Advertisement Except here's the thing: For years now, that No. 21 car has been built and assembled right next to the ones driven by Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, the ones capable of running up front and leading laps. So why wouldn't the Wood Brothers be able to do the same thing? Well, team president Jon Wood told The Athletic last August there was 'absolutely nothing' preventing it. 'If we could open our books and show what we spend on motors and on a pit crew, it is top-level,' he said. 'There's no reason we can't run as good as those other three cars.' Fast forward to Sunday, when a triumphant Josh Berry celebrated his first career NASCAR Cup Series win and returned the Wood Brothers to victory lane at a 1.5-mile track for the first time since 1993. It was also the team's second top-five finish in as many weeks (Berry finished fourth at Phoenix), quickly matching that total from the last three years combined with former driver Harrison Burton. Suddenly, it's trendy to link the Wood Brothers with Penske ('that's the fourth Penske car, after all!') — which is accurate, but also diminishes what the Wood family has put together. 'When we suck, it's our fault. But when we do good, we had nothing to do with it. It's 100 percent Penske or something,' Jon Wood said Sunday of the perception. 'That's a frustrating part. These are our guys who are doing this. We sat in a room and debated who our next driver would be for 2025. It's Josh Berry. Those are decisions that we made collectively. It's our race team and our decision.' In addition to Berry, the Woods also chose former Penske engineer Miles Stanley as crew chief in the offseason — and Stanley has quickly shown he's a great fit for the role (not that his championship pedigree was in doubt after contributing to three straight). 'My goal for this team and where we want to go and what we want to accomplish this season — this (winning) is it,' Stanley said. 'We want to win a race, we want to make the playoffs, we want to advance in the playoffs. We're marching down the path to do that. Advertisement 'I strongly believe we can be a contender week in and week out.' Berry may have been a surprise victor because he had never won a Cup race and the first intermediate track event of the season would typically be won by a Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing driver. But Sunday was a message the Wood Brothers' internal expectations are to run with their Penske alliance teammates and, in this case, beat them. At this spring Las Vegas race two years ago, Berry was thrust into an unusual situation that also represented the chance of a lifetime: Substituting for Hendrick driver Chase Elliott after Elliott broke his leg in a snowboarding accident. But Berry finished 29th in that Vegas race and recalled flying home that night thinking his Cup Series career was over. As it turned out, that wasn't the case; Hendrick asked him to drive the No. 9 car again at Phoenix, where he finished in the top 10 and parlayed that into more starts until Elliott returned. 'They believed in me and they gave me another week,' Berry said. 'It's amazing the things that have (had) to happen to get to this point.' The same could be said for Berry's entire career story. He went to the same suburban Nashville high school as Taylor Swift, and can recall her performing in the school talent show. But dreams of NASCAR glory felt elusive; the closest he got to it was racing online with Dale Earnhardt Jr. while working as a bank teller in his hometown. Earnhardt, a believer in Berry's talent, gave him a chance to race Late Models and Berry moved to North Carolina to pursue a short-track racing career. But even then, he only wished to make a living in grassroots series rather than NASCAR's highest level. One domino after another continued to fall, and Berry last year became a Cup Series rookie at age 33 — unusually old for today's incoming drivers. Even then, his former team (Stewart-Haas Racing) folded and he spent months with his future in doubt. Advertisement Now Berry has found a true home with the Woods, and he has an opportunity to put real roots down with a contending team. It's a refreshing story in the sense of its rarity in modern-day Cup racing, which has pipelines full of development drivers backed with millions in funding. 'Five years ago, I felt like I was going to be a career short track racer,' he said. '… I look back now and I miss those days tremendously with driving with my buddies to all these racetracks, working on my own car. Those people made me who I am, the way I think, the way I approach racing. I wouldn't change anything about it.' In 2023, Bubba Wallace had five top-five finishes — all on intermediate tracks. Those seemed to be his No. 23 car's strength after he won the 2022 fall Kansas race and also finished second at Michigan that summer. But although Wallace achieved a new career high in top-fives last season (six), none of them came on intermediate tracks. He has felt the different Goodyear tire made it tougher to get a handle on his cars, and it resulted in chasing some speed ghosts last year as he pushed his team to make adjustments that didn't end up working. So this time, Wallace purposefully declined to ask for any big changes after his car was fast — but loose — in practice. He and the No. 23 team called it quits after 23 practice laps, which was tied for the eighth-fewest in the field. 'I had some big moments (in practice) and I just stopped,' Wallace said. 'I got out of the car and was like, 'I'm done. I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole of where you guys are telling me how to drive and do all this stuff and create bad habits.' The alternative, Wallace said, would have been to try several changes that would have sat in his mind overnight and into the race on Sunday. His lap averages would have been wildly different, whereas instead Wallace left practice knowing he was third-quickest in five- and 10-lap averages and sixth-fastest in 15-lap average. Advertisement 'While I didn't get the seat time, I didn't create something I know is going to play in my mind for (Sunday),' he said. It seemed to pay off, because Wallace finished fourth in both stages at Las Vegas and led 20 laps — his most on a 1.5-mile track since Texas in 2023. His day got messed up due to being part of the four-wide wreck with 72 laps to go (Wallace finished 28th after that), but the speed was still a positive sign. Carson Hocevar isn't going to be happy if he reads this. 'Dammit, you m—f—,' he said with a smile when he heard a question about Homestead. 'Don't bring this up. You can talk about it after Homestead.' The reason is a comment he made to The Athletic in December, when we recapped his Rookie of the Year campaign. At the time, Hocevar said he was particularly proud of running the most creative and weird racing lines possible, like when he discovered a different way to run the Homestead track in the Truck Series race (which he won) and waited a full year to try it in Cup. It not only worked for him — he was top 10 in both stages and finished ninth — but he felt validated by other drivers and spotters copying his line. He was just hoping the garage wouldn't remember it heading into next weekend's race there, and thus this column calling attention to it could be bad for Hocevar — not that it would take the field long to figure it out. After all, Tyler Reddick was the first to pull off the wall and run Hocevar's unconventional line last year. 'If the 77 is hauling ass and drives by, it's a bit of a sign that line is obviously pretty good,' Hocevar said. 'Because (people think) 'His car isn't the best' or 'He's not the greatest race car driver of all time.' … They're probably like, 'Oh s—, my car can definitely do that.'' But Hocevar has had success running it, which could be a boost for a Spire Motorsports organization that already showed speed at Vegas by having Michael McDowell win the first pole position in company history. Advertisement It's now been more than a year since Rajah Caruth won a Truck Series race, with the 22-year-old unable to back up his Vegas victory last season. But Caruth doesn't seem worried and said, 'It's not a question about winning a race this year, just a matter of when.' Drivers often press when they go through a winless drought and expect to see victory lane more often. Even Kyle Busch spoke this weekend about how he pushed too hard last year at times, which cost him a chance to continue his record-breaking streak of consecutive seasons with a win. 'Kansas last fall, I felt rushed,' Busch said. 'I felt hurried. I felt like I needed to get through the traffic as fast as I could and I put myself in a bad spot; we hit the wall and lost the race.' How does Caruth avoid trying to force it, especially with the expectations on him and the opportunity to become a future star if he succeeds? 'It's really not that deep,' he said. Why? Because Caruth said he's focused on process over results. If he does the work and operates on instinct rather than emotion, it becomes more about being happy with execution rather than getting twisted over the outcome. 'You just have to execute and do your best and if it works out, great,' he said. 'If not, you just adjust and go from there. And I don't mean that from a nonchalant perspective, but just from not putting the world on my shoulders. 'At the end of the day, I'm going to do my best and I feel good about our chances, and our trucks are fast. I'll put myself against any of those guys in the truck. Everybody's really good, but I'm confident in myself, too.' You may have heard a thing or two lately about NASCAR's charter system, since it's at the center of an antitrust lawsuit brought by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports. Now Kyle Larson's High Limit Racing sprint car series, which he co-owns with six-time sprint car national champion (and brother-in-law) Brad Sweet, is implementing its own version of a charter system. Advertisement Except in this case, there are a few key differences. For one thing, High Limit is calling its charters 'franchises,' since Sweet said that's basically what they are anyway. And they're permanent, unlike in NASCAR. They also don't come with guaranteed starting spots in the A-Main features, since sprint car tradition calls for all spots to be earned. High Limit released the payout plan for the first four years of the franchise system, which starts next year, and it will award a total of $18 million to its teams. That's a ton in the dirt racing world, which Larson said is important to him — especially after he and Sweet began a rival series to the well-established World of Outlaws and convinced teams to take a chance on them. 'It's professionalizing our sport to be less of a hobby,' Larson said. 'We want the teams to feel that, we want our fans to feel that at our events. This definitely takes the sport to another level.' Tim Clauson, co-owner of the Clauson Marshall Racing team, said this is the first time after being around dirt racing in four decades he's felt there was a financial light at the end of the tunnel. Clauson said he ran the numbers and believes there could be a 40 to 50 percent increase financially for the teams, which all lose money on an annual basis. Former NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne said despite owning Sweet's six-time championship winning Kasey Kahne Racing team, he's 'still putting a lot of money in' each year. 'Now we have something to look forward to the next year before the season even starts,' he said. Are the High Limit owners worried there could be some sort of legal issues at some point down the road, based on what happens with the NASCAR lawsuit? Larson said he's 'just a driver' in NASCAR and has never seen a NASCAR charter agreement, while Sweet said it's not the actual system that is the problem with the NASCAR lawsuit. 'They're just having issues with the inside of the system,' Sweet said. 'We think we'll be perfectly fine and successful, and there was really no hesitation for what's going on with them. We don't really see it the same as what we're trying to do over here.' (Top photo of the Wood Brothers team celebrating Josh Berry's win Sunday in Las Vegas: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
