Boris Said is committed to running the first five races in 2010 and will announce his sponsorship for the Daytona 500 on Saturday. Said, who is driving the #94 Turner Motorsports BMW in the Grand-Am Rolex 24 at Daytona this weekend, will pilot the #26 Ford for Bill Jenkins’ Latitude 43 Motorsports team this season. Frankie Stoddard, who Said referred to as his “partner” in the venture, will be the crew chief. Roush Fenway Racing will provide the cars and engines. Said, 47, said the team is still looking for sponsorship for the remaining races to fill out the schedule. “If we have to start and park we will,” Said said. “We’re going to run the first five races that’s for sure.”(Fox Sports)(1-29-2010)
UPDATE: There are a lot of things that stand between Said having not only a successful Speedweeks, but also succeeding in the 35 races that follow it. The first hurdle Latitude 43 crossed was getting sponsorship that’ll allow it to race in the Daytona 500, which is on the verge of being announced. “I just signed it [Thursday] and in the agreement they asked me not to announce anything, because they want to announce it,” Said said. “There will be two cars with the same sponsor on it at Daytona. The other car they’re sponsoring at Daytona, he called me up and offered it to me, so I said, ‘Do you want to drive the car?’ “And he said, ‘No, no — you’re going to drive the car and I’m going to drive the other car.’ So that was another thing with a really good friend and I’m really excited about it. I think it’s going to be [big] — they’re going to bring a lot of people down and have a big hospitality suite so hopefully we can put up a good effort for ’em.” But after Daytona, the team needs additional sponsorship to be able to race. Team owner Bill Jenkins, Said and Stoddard are among the group scrambling after it, but it’s not all they need. Stoddard is preparing the cars with three other employees and admitted Friday they didn’t know who’d pit the car in the 500.(NASCAR.com)(1-30-2010)
UPDATE 2: Boris Said told Sirius NASCAR Radio’s Sirius Speedway with Dave Moody that he has secured sponsorship from Window World for this month’s Daytona 500. His new Latitude 43 Motorsports team is still seeking additional support, however, forcing Said and crew chief Frank Stoddard to do less with more. “We’re doing all of SpeedWeek on one engine,” he said. “It costs $100 a mile to run these engines, so we’ll run minimal laps in practice. We have one really good car and not much of a backup car, so we’ll have to pick our spots. A top-20 finish (in the Daytona 500) would make me really happy, and a Top-15 would be like a win.”(Sirius Speedway)(2-2-2010)
