Ragan comes in season-best fourth
TALLADEGA — Every time he climbs into his race machine, David Ragan figures he's going to learn something. He learned a little more about running with the big boys of the NASCAR Sprint Cup series Sunday, and didn't blink. Ragan finished a season-best fourth in the Aaron's 499, speeding across the finish line at Talladega Superspeedway as the rest of the field was crashing and burning behind him. It was his first top-15 Cup finish here, his best finish in the series since 2007's fall Richmond race and better than any finish his father — eight-year Cup veteran Ken — posted in seven career Cup starts here in the '80s. It moved him into 15th in the points standings.
"(It was) just very comfortable running in the top 10 or 15 all day, and I think that's one of the biggest advantages we had from the green flag," the 22-year-old Unadilla, Ga., driver said. "We had a good qualifying effort (sixth) and good track position, and just like any track, the more you can run up toward the front and get out of the mess in the back and all the beating and banging, the better off you're going to be." Perhaps even bigger than where he was running on the track was who was running with. Fifteen laps in, Ragan found himself sandwiched between two of the biggest names in the game — Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. If the two superstars were going to be bump-buddies the rest of the day as they were in the Nationwide race Saturday, they were going to have to go through Ragan to do it. And he wasn't giving up ground. Some 25 laps later, he was running between Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick in the top 10. "I just look at that as a chance to learn something," Ragan said. "When you've got that caliber of drivers and that kind of teams around you, you can learn a lot, from getting on and off pit road to what they do in traffic and how they maneuver around lapped cars. Just try to learn and watch what they do." The biggest lessons he'll take away from his third Sprint Cup start here and sixth superspeedway start were the importance of being aggressive about getting onto pit road and taking it easy once you got back on the track. "Those guys weren't doing anything special at the beginning, just staying in line and being smart," he said. "Toward the end of the race everybody gets a little antsy and wants to be Superman, (but) at the beginning of the race be smooth and you'll be fine." He played it as conservative as they come down the stretch, partly because he's seen late-lap moves here go either way and he had no teammates or Fords willing to go with him. "It would've been cool to race back to the checkered and try to win," he said, "but a fourth place we'll take and try to get a win next week at Richmond." His people feel his time is coming. "David Ragan, he's here, he's for real," crew chief Jimmy Fennig said. "If somebody would realize it and help him out there once in a while, we might've won this race." |
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