MONTREAL — Ron Fellows has known Boris Said long enough to know that Marcos Ambrose should be careful Saturday at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“Put it this way, I wouldn’t want to be Marcos,” Fellows said Friday about the possibility that Said would retaliate for a wreck this spring in Mexico City.
After Ambrose spun Said in the April race in Mexico, the irate Said walked to the Australian’s pit box and apologized to crew chief Gary Cogswell for the car that Ambrose’s NASCAR Nationwide Series team would have to fix down the road.
“You say things in the heat of the battle right after because it’s an emotional sport,” Said said. “I wish I could have taken some of those things back, but I said them. I respect him as a race car driver. He’s very fast. He’s not on my Christmas card list any more and he probably never will be.
“If we’re around each other on the track, I’m going to race him probably harder than I’ve raced anybody. But I’m not here to be a dirty driver and do what he did to me. It’s not my way. … I’m still mad about it, but I’m not going to go out there and wreck him or anything. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Ambrose, second last year behind Kevin Harvick in the inaugural race on the 2.71-mile, 14-turn course on Isle Notre Dame, spoke about the incident soon after Said walked past his hauler without breaking stride or looking over.
“We’re both driving Fords, so we see each other from time to time. He’s not overly friendly to me, so it’s his choice to make the next move. I tried to clear the air after Mexico,” Ambrose said. “I don’t owe him anything. I don’t owe him more of an apology than I’ve already done. If he wants to talk or not, that’s his choice. I’ve got no bad feelings. I’m looking forward to racing him hard.”
Ambrose was second behind Scott Pruett in the first practice session Friday, turning a lap at 94.810 mph in overcast conditions, then topped the sunny final practice at 94.532 mph before a crowd of about 50,000 fans.
Said was fifth in the opening session and third in the second.
“The first thing that catches your eye is just how many people are here,” Said said. “I’ve never been to a track on a Friday where the grandstands are packed. I don’t know if Canadians don’t work on Fridays or what, but it’s really cool. It’s a cool atmosphere and there’s no other race that we go to that’s like that.”
Kyle Busch, a six-time winner in 20 Nationwide starts this year, is skipping the race to concentrate on the Sprint Cup event Sunday at Pocono, while Canadian Patrick Carpentier gave up his Cup ride to devote full attention to his hometown race.
“It’s too much travel,” Carpentier said.
Points leader Clint Bowyer, defending series champion Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, David Ragan and David Reutimann are racing in both events. They missed practice Friday and also will skip qualifying Saturday, forcing them to start at the back of the field.
“The nice thing here is that there are some very long straights where you can drop down and pass,” said Pruett, first in the opening practice at 95.152 mph and third in the second at 94.226. “Coming through the first 15-20 guys will be easy, then it will get harder the closer you come to the front.
“This is the most difficult track that I race, without a doubt. It’s technical. It’s very high speed. The turns are very slow. You get in there at 170 mph and then you’re right back down to 40 mph on the turns.”
Carpentier, Fellows and former Formula One and CART champion Jacques Villeneuve top the nine Canadian entries. Villeneuve is making his first Nationwide start, while Fellows, from Ontario, has three wins and two poles in Nationwide road-course events.
Villeneuve hoped to run full-time in Sprint Cup this season, but was derailed by a lack of sponsorship. He has made nine NASCAR starts in the last two seasons, two in Sprint Cup and seven in the Craftsman Truck Series.
“Everyone has been very helpful,” Villeneuve said. “Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya. We didn’t get along in F1, but in NASCAR he’s a very nice guy. That’s the nice thing about NASCAR, everyone seems to help out.”
Although Villeneuve has made many F1 starts on the track named after his late father, he still had to attend a rookie meeting Friday.
“It’s not a question of how to drive the track,” Villeneuve said. “There’s some rules in NASCAR racing on a road course that are different than in open wheel. There’s some things I needed to know.”
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