David Ragan – Race Recap
UAW Ford 500-Talladega, Ala. / October 7, 2007
Started 42nd / Finished 34th

DAVID RAGAN FINISHES 34TH AT TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
David Ragan and the No. 6 AAA Travel Ford Fusion

TALLADEGA, Ala. (October 7, 2007) – The UAW Ford 500 at Talladega Superspeedway marked the first “Car of Tomorrow” (COT) restrictor plate race in NASCAR history. Two practice sessions for the 188-lap race were held on Friday afternoon leaving Saturday for qualifying.

The Roush Fenway teams used Friday’s practice session to work together in the draft with several other Ford competitors. They found that by doing this they were able to run several tenths of a second faster than the other groups on track.

On Saturday, David Ragan rolled off of pit road 43rd in his AAA Travel Ford for his two-lap qualifying attempt. Ragan ran a lap time of 51.691 seconds putting him in the 35th starting spot for Sunday’s race. However, due to the rear of Ragan’s AAA Travel Ford being too low for post-qualifying inspection he was moved to the rear of the field and started Sunday’s race in 42nd place.

Ragan was in good company at the back of the pack, with teammates, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle only a few rows ahead. The teammates and their crew chiefs planned to stick together near the rear of the field.
Ragan pitted several times throughout the race for fresh tires and fuel, however there were no adjustments made to his AAA Travel Ford during the event.

It was just past the 100-lap mark when the Roush Fenway drivers grew anxious and questioned whether the opportunity that they were waiting for was going to take place at all. Slowly the teammates began to leave the pack and before long it was every driver for himself.

At this point, Ragan was running in the top 20, but chose to hang with teammate Matt Kenseth and they worked together to move forward through the field.

Ragan and Kenseth worked their way into the pack, running the lowest groove on the track. They were gaining on the group running the high line when the moment came that they had anticipating all afternoon. The No. 43 car made contact with the outside wall sending him shooting across the race track. Ragan dove low to miss the other cars involved in the incident and just as he did that the No. 00 shot across and made contact with Ragan. There was severe damage to the front end of the AAA Travel Ford so Ragan immediately headed for the garage. He was met by his crew who got right to work repairing the nose of his No. 6 Fusion.

On lap 168 Ragan rolled back down pit road. Before he could even complete a lap Ragan radioed to crew chief, Jimmy Fennig that there was no flow to the radiator and he was leaking water.
With less than 20 laps to go Fennig called Ragan back to the garage. The AAA team was done for the day. Ragan finished several laps down and in 34th place.

“I got into the No.17 just a little bit when everybody was checking-up,” said Ragan. “I don’t know what happened in front of those guys. I felt like we had just a little bit of damage right there and then I guess that was Reutimann that came across the track and I hit him. I wish we could have got slowed up a little quicker but things happen like that when you’re running in a pack that close together. It was pretty uneventful. You know, you had to have a lot of help to do anything, basically normal Talladega racing. You just had to ride around and wait for some help. I felt like we had a good enough car where we could move up a little bit, just needed some time.”

Ragan is currently 22nd in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings. He is second in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year race.

Ragan will compete next in the Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on October 13th. Coverage begins at 7PM Eastern on ABC and MRN.