Dodge Dealers 400-Dover, Del. / September 23, 2007
Started 35th / Finished 25th

RAGAN HAS DISAPPOINTING DAY AT THE MONSTER MILE
David Ragan and the No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion

|DOVER, Del. (September 23, 2007) – David Ragan finished 14th at Dover International Speedway in June and with only 36 points separating him from a top-20 position in the NEXTEL Cup Series championship point standings, the driver of the No. 6 AAA Ford was looking forward to a successful weekend.

Ragan finished the final round of NEXTEL Cup Series practice on Saturday as 11th quickest although he’d qualified 35th on Friday. The field rolled off pit road around 1:40pm ET Sunday and the race was underway moments later.

Ragan immediately began to pick up spots, charging to 28th place within the first 10 laps. Unfortunately his momentum diminished when Ragan started losing positions after the first pit stop. He radioed to the crew that his AAA Ford was not handling as well. At one point, Ragan told his crew that it felt like he had a tire going down.

Ragan hit pit road on lap 55 for tires, fuel and chassis adjustments. He reentered the field in 35th position.
Despite the efforts of his team, by lap 103 the handling had grown much worse.

By lap 124 Ragan was one lap down and still struggling with his Ford Fusion. He felt like the left rear tire was riding really low and by lap 135 Ragan told his team that he would have to pit under green because he could not maintain control of his race car for much longer.

Ragan came into the pits on the next lap for tires, fuel and another chassis adjustment. He reentered the field in 40th place and several laps down.

It was only about 40 laps later when Ragan began to feel the vibration again. This time he was able to come in under caution on lap 206 to get tires and adjustments.

Ragan continued to struggle with the handling of his race car throughout the remainder of the race. He was several laps down, but gained positions slowly as some of his competitors fell out of the race.

He was determined to get all that he could and finally crossed the finish line in 25th place.

“Man, I wish I could come back and kind of start all over,” said Ragan, “Busch and Cup. We just really struggled. This is one of my favorite tracks and we seemed to run well here in the spring. Our Cup car was just a handful all day. The first 15 laps it was a rocket ship. We moved up 10 spots and I thought we were going to have an excellent car from there on, but it was extremely tight.”

“We pitted that one time, bad wheel chatter,” continued Ragan, “and didn’t find anything wrong. It was just a bad day. After you pit under green and lose three laps and then we lost a couple more there during our green flag stops. Tough day but I had a good effort to come out in the top-25. That’s almost unbelievable to how bad our car was at times. At the end we got our car back pretty decent but you just can’t give up two-thirds of the race and then expect to come back. We’ll learn from it and try to move on and do better at Kansas.”

Ragan is currently 21st in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings and second in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year Race.

Ragan will compete next in the LifeLock 400 at Kansas Speedway on September 30th. Coverage begins at 1:00pm ET on ABC and MRN.