David Ragan – Race Recap
LifeLock 400-Kansas City, KS / September 30, 2007
Started 17th / Finished 16th

RAGAN DOESN’T LET RAIN SPOIL THE DAY; EARNS TOP ROOKIE HONORS FOR THE 13TH TIME THIS SEASON
David Ragan and the No. 6 AAA Insurance Ford Fusion

KANSAS CITY, KS (September 30, 2007) – David Ragan and the No. 6 AAA Insurance team brought a new race car to Kansas. With Kansas not on the list of tracks where the “Car of Tomorrow” is being used in 2007, Crew Chief Jimmy Fennig took this opportunity to pull a car from the 2006 stable and rebuild it from the ground up.

The first test for the newly rebuilt Ford Fusion was NEXTEL Cup practice on Friday morning. Ragan and the team worked on their race set up throughout the first session and finished up as 39th quickest.

Qualifying began around 3:00pm CDT on Friday afternoon and Ragan was the 31st car to roll off pit road. His two-lap qualifying attempt put him in the 19th starting position for Sunday’s race. Due to the No. 12 car being penalized for failing post race inspection and the No. 48 car being forced to go to their back up car during practice on Saturday, Ragan moved up to 17th position for the start of the LifeLock 400 on Sunday.

At the start of the race, with rainy weather in the forecast, Ragan immediately began to fall back in the pack before radioing to Fennig that he was too “tight” at the exit of the corners. The yellow flag was displayed on lap 11 when rain began to fall. After a quick shower NASCAR went to work drying the track and at 2:15pm CDT the cars rolled off of pit road once again.

After the restart, Ragan was running in 26th position, but fell back to 32nd by the time that the caution came back out on lap 27. He once again radioed to his crew chief that his AAA Ford Fusion was not handling well. Fennig brought Ragan down pit road on lap 29 for four tires, fuel and adjustments. Ragan reentered the field in 29th position.

When the race resumed on lap 31 Ragan began to show improvement in the handling of his AAA Insurance Ford and moved into the top-25 during his next green flag run.

When the field went yellow again on lap 59 he told his team that the adjustments that they made helped for a little while, but at the end of his run he began to feel the handling problems returning.

Ragan came down pit road on lap 61 for tire, fuel and more chassis adjustments. He returned to the track in 34th position.

Ragan was able to pick up a couple of spots during the next run and when the caution was displayed on lap 88 Ragan radioed to Fennig that the changes they were making were working – he just needed them in smaller doses. He told Fennig that he could stand to be “freed up” a little bit more.

Ragan came into the pits in 25th position on lap 90 and left in 20th after the AAA Insurance pit crew performed a speedy 12.81 second pit stop.

Ragan took the green and was able to maintain his positioning within the top-20. When the next caution came out on lap 99 Fennig opted to keep Ragan out on the track. He gained two positions and restarted in 17th place.

At this point storm clouds were surrounding the 1.5-mile race track and Ragan was running very low on fuel. He also had minimal damage to his right front fender after making contact with another competitor.

Several cars had already come down pit road under the green flag for fuel allowing Ragan to move into 12th place just in time for the second wave of rain storms.

The caution flag came out on lap 144 for rain. Many teams thought that their day was over due to how hard and how long the rain came down, but NASCAR was determined to get the cars back out on track.

At approximately 6:20pm CDT the line of cars, which had been parked on pit road for nearly two hours, rolled back on to the track in preparation to take the green flag once again.
Ragan and several others were forced to pit prior to the green flag for fuel. When the green flag dropped Ragan was in tenth place and gained two more spots over the next 20 laps.

It was on lap 180 that Fennig made the ultimate decision to bring Ragan into the pits for tires in an attempt to make a final charge to the front of the pack.

The sun was quickly setting over the speedway and with no lights at the track, NASCAR decided to declare lap 210 the final lap of the race.

Ragan reentered the field in 19th position with 30 laps to go.
He fought hard to regain his positioning, but Ragan began to struggle with the handling of his race car once again and radioed to his team that he was beginning to lose rear grip.

Ragan was running in 16th position when the debris caution came out on lap 206. The final laps of the race were run under yellow and Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle claimed his first victory on 2007. Ragan brought home a 16th place finish and claimed top rookie honors for the 13th time this season

“Not as good as we wanted,” said Ragan. “We got a little greedy there at the end. When we got there in the top-10 or 12, I really thought we could finish up there. We were good. We decided to come down and take four tires and it drove just a little too good there at the end, just a little free. That’s the first time we’ve been free I think all weekend here. The track went from soaking wet to no rubber to a lot of rubber to as cool as we’ve seen it. We were off a little bit there at the end but still a decent finish, a top-20, and we gained a few points. Not as good as we wanted but we’ll take it and move on”

Ragan is currently 21st in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings; 46 points out of 20th. Ragan is also second in the Raybestos Rookie point standings.

Ragan will compete next at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, October 7th in the UAW Ford 500. Coverage begins at 1:00PM Eastern on ABC and MRN.