Ambrose angers some en route to career-best Nationwide finish
MEXICO CITY – Not everyone was pleased with Marcos Ambrose’s career-best finish of second in Sunday’s Corona Mexico 200 at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Boris Said was particularly upset with Ambrose, and race winner Kyle Busch didn’t have very nice things to say, either.
“These guys were battling like it was coming to the end of the race, which it was, but we don't have V8 Supercars and we can't body slam each other and take each other out,” said Busch, referring to Ambrose’s background of Australian racing. “The 59 [of Ambrose] spun two guys out on the restarts ….”
One of those was Said, a road-racing veteran who threatened retaliation in a future race for an incident between the two drivers on lap 55 of the 80-lap race.
"Marcos Ambrose just cheap-shotted me and took me out,” Said said. “He either made a mistake, or he's incredibly stupid. He hooked my left rear in Turn 1. He had me sideways for a while and then just turned me around.”
Said also went to Gary Cogswell, Ambrose’s crew chief, “to go apologize to his crew chief because it’s going to cost him a car.”
That wasn’t necessary, Ambrose said.
“There’s no point in getting in the crew chief’s face because he’s not driving the car,” Ambrose said. “I’m going to ring him on Monday, and hopefully sleep will help him just think through things a little bit more. I value Boris’ friendship, and he is a fantastic racer. I didn’t mean to do it.
“I don’t know what happened, to be honest with you. I had pretty square contact, and all of a sudden, he’s … off to the left. I caught his rear bumper bar in mine. I don’t know what happened; it wasn’t intentional. Racing happens.”
Ambrose apologized to Said through the media and said he would do so to Said’s face.
Still, Ambrose wouldn’t let the controversy overshadow a solid performance. He qualified fourth but had to start at the rear of the field because of a clutch change. After racing to the top 20, Ambrose’s pit crew was hit with a penalty, forcing Ambrose to the rear of the field again.
“We’ve had a tough year,” Ambrose said. “We really wanted to have a strong day today. You’re not going to go and pass 43 cars 15 times like we did today without being aggressive. And you’ve got to be in this racing to try and come through. It was really tough racing.
“It’s some of the hardest racing I’ve ever done there that last 20 laps. Then you’ve got Carl [Edwards] and Kyle [Busch] and Scott [Pruett] – they’re the best in the business. We’re hanging on the best we can and trying to race.
“It’s pretty awesome. I’ll probably look back at this race as probably one of my best races in just having to fight all day. Everything was against us, but we fought all day and came through.”
Ambrose, whose best finish of 2008 before Mexico was an 11th at Atlanta, moved up four spots to 13th in the Nationwide Series standings.
