Boris Said to Drive Wood Brothers/JTG Racing’s No. 21 Fusion at Watkins Glen

Boris Said to Drive Wood Brothers/JTG Racing’s No. 21 Fusion at Watkins Glen

Little Debbie Ford Fusion – “Bill Elliott came up a little while ago, and I guess he had run into Boris across the garage, and he asked him what he was doing, and Boris said, ‘Nothing,’ you know, he had missed the race. I don’t know from where it started, if Bill asked him to drive our car or what. I think that’s the way it went because Bill came to me and said that in the best interests of the team, let’s put Boris in. He said I’ll give it my best effort, and Bill’s an excellent road racer, the first place he ever won was at Riverside, but he suggested putting Boris in. We first cleared it with sponsors and then went to NASCAR and cleared it with them.”

IT WAS BILL’S IDEA? “It was Bill’s idea. I was standing right there and he comes over and goes, ‘Come here a second.’ He came up with it. Like he said, ‘I’ll leave it up to y’all, but I’ll do the best I can, but I think is the best for the team to try to get back in the top 35.” DID YOU HAVE TO CHANGE SEATS OR PEDALS AT ALL? “Bill’s kind of tall. I think there’s only a couple of inches difference, although Boris looks towering, I guess, but he had already been in the car, I think while I was in the NASCAR trailer he was already in the car.”

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT BORIS? HAD YOU EVER WORKED WITH HIM BEFORE? “We didn’t know Boris at all and made a blind phone call to him – I think it was the first year we had Elliott Sadler, which would be 1999 – and we asked Boris to go help test with Elliott at Sonoma. Like I say, without knowing each other, he did anything we asked, he bent over backwards for us, and when we got done we asked him how much we owed, and he said, basically, pay me what you think I was worth. And we’ve remained friends ever since. Eddie [Wood] called him a couple of years ago, might’ve been last year, when we were talking about going to Mexico for the first time, and we wanted him to get some seat time with Jon [Wood] and we had a car of Jack Roush’s that had two seats in it – and this was January or February – Boris flew out here, red-eye, drove up from Greensboro, tested that day and basically flew back to Mexico to go race. It was a deal like that. He doesn’t want to be known as a teacher, he wants to be known as a race driver, but he’s excellent at both I think.”

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