Road-Course Pro Said Looks to New Team

NASCAR driver Boris Said watches qualifying rounds Friday, June 30, 2006, for the Pepsi 400 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Brian Myrick) (Brian Myrick - AP)

-- It's a phrase Boris Said repeats a lot when he talks about yearning for his first Nextel Cup victory.

"My whole life, people have always told me `No: You're too poor or you're too old or you're too ugly or whatever,' and that's always been my motivation. I'm gonna succeed at this, and I had to start my own team to try to do it."

It's been quite a start.

With no owner's points, Said had to qualify on speed and just hoped to be around at the finish in his fledgling team's first outing last month at Infineon Raceway. He started sixth, led a lap and finished ninth on the twisting road course.

"We were top five all weekend and it was within reach until about 10 or 12 to go, and I just made a mistake and went off track," he said.

Last weekend at Daytona International Speedway was a bigger challenge for Said, whose resume is full of road-course domination but shows only a handful of oval efforts in a Cup car _ most of them forgettable. And this was a restrictor-plate race.

Again, his goals were to be in the show at the start and running at the end.

So he put his No. 60 Ford on the pole, led eight of the final 10 laps and, if the Pepsi 400 had been just a bit shorter, might have held off eventual winner Tony Stewart for the checkered flag after staying out when everybody else pitted. He finished fourth, losing ground in the last two laps on worn tires.

"It is the highlight of my racing career. I felt like Rocky Balboa in the 15th round, and I just won," he said after the race.

Said has joined forces with longtime ally Mark Simo and former crew chief Frank Stoddard to cobble together a team with some payback help from Jack Roush and Ray Evernham.

Until last year, the 43-year-old Said had run only a dozen Cup races since 1999, all but one on road courses. In 2005, driving for MB2 Motorsports, he entered nine races, with a career-best third-place Cup finish on the road course at Watkins Glen, but nothing better than 27th to show for the ovals.

He has won a pole in each of NASCAR's three national series. He won a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Infineon in 1998. And his road-racing career brought him the SCCA Trans-Am Series championship in 2002, two Rolex 24 at Daytona victories and the 12 hours of Sebring.