Whats with the Boris Said hate? (NASCAR)

The Game Room
1

I know I probably won’t get much of a discussion here, but here it goes anyway. There seems to be a lot of hate being directed at Boris Said, a road racer who occasionally fills in for a NASCAR regular on the two road course races that NASCAR has every year, for this incident at the end of last weeks race at Watkins Glen. The relevant part starts at 2:50, although I think the whole thing is pretty interesting. Color me biased.:slight_smile: This crash is pretty violent, but all drivers involved walked away. The consensus (among fans anyway, although I seem to remember one of the commentators as well as Ragan himself saying it too) seems to be that Said (red #51), should’ve backed off and gave David Ragan (yellow #6) some room, since Said is just a “part-timer,” while Ragan is full-time and in contention for the Chase (NASCAR version of playoffs). This was the last lap of the race.

What? Maybe I’m crazy, but it seems to me like Said had outside position and Ragan tried to (maybe intentionally, maybe not) pinch Said off the track. I don’t really get why he is expected to back off just because of this. Maybe if it was early in the race or something, then yeah, it would’ve been pretty dumb to force the issue there. But not on the final lap, where every driver is expected (I think) to finish as high in the running order as possible.

I’ve seen drivers try to pinch others either off the track or into the wall in order to “block” or force the guy to stay behind them. It would appear that Said (man, what a weird last name :D) wasn’t having any of it, and in my opinion, he shouldn’t have. This is stock car racing, not tea party. I don’t see why someone is expected to not race so hard just because they are a “part-timer.” I would be as bold as to claim that had J. Gordon, Stewart, one of the Busch bros., etc, been in Boris’ position, Ragan (or his spotter) would be getting the blame for this one.

Let me go on the record as saying that I’m really happy nobody got hurt in this one, I thought for sure there would’ve been at least some broken bones here. Hopefully they get some safety updates here before somebody gets killed at what is an otherwise pretty sweet race track.

Thoughts? Please refrain from the “they just go in circles” comments. That was only funny the first few billion times.

2

The belief is that Boris had nothing to gain by finishing higher AND he took out a guy who had everything to gain by finishing higher, so he should have backed off out of courtesy. It’s nothing new and it happens in virtually every sport where individual cumulative point totals determine the champion.

Of course, he’s a successful racer in his own right, and asking someone to swallow their well-earned pride and back off is asking a lot. Should he have backed off? Sure. Is anybody surprised that he didn’t? Probably not. He was hired to do a job, and he was out there doing his job, which is a lot more than can be said for the start-and-park teams. Would Ragan have backed off?

3

Good question. Ragan doesn’t strike me as a particularly aggressive driver, and at that point, he may not have wanted to risk a wreck which would’ve (and pretty much did) screw up his chances at getting in the Chase. On the other hand, these guys all seem much more aggressive at the road courses than they were when I used to watch religiously back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. (I haven’t watched races this deep into the season since like '01 or so.)

4

Airman got it right.

One of the issues is that NASCAR fans already have bad feelings about the road-course specialists. The general feeling is that you should run the whole season (or as much as you can afford - nobody blames a driver with money troubles). Another issue is that many old-school fans just don’t like the road courses anyway.

5

I remember a lot of people didn’t like him back in the 90’s when he was full-time in the truck series. Once he became a ringer, his reputation seemed to improve. Over the last couple of years, it’s gone back down again though.

6

Right on. I didn’t know he ran full-time in trucks. Thanks for sharing guys.