| | | | | | KEEP ON KEEPING ON | Ragan makes Darlington latest sign of improvement | |
| | Jared Turner / SceneDaily.com David Ragan appears to be a vastly improved race-car driver.
The most telling evidence yet of that: a fifth-place finish in Saturday night’s Dodge Challenger 500 at tough and tricky Darlington Raceway.
“That’s an awesome run,” said the second-year Roush Fenway Racing driver after scoring his first top-five finish in three Cup starts at the newly paved 1.366-mile facility. “Whether we were at Daytona, Talladega or Richmond or Bristol, that would be great, but to do it at Darlington is just something special.
"Darlington is an awesome track. You’re running laps out there and you think about the guys that made this place famous like Cale Yarborough and [Bill] Elliott and David Pearson and people like that.”
On Saturday, Ragan was also thinking about just surviving. Well before the green flag dropped on the season’s 11th Sprint Cup race, the 22-year-old Georgia native had witnessed multiple drivers sustain damage from contact with Darlington’s walls during prerace practice and qualifying.
Ragan got his own so-called Darlington stripe on Saturday after brushing up against the concrete more than once during the race, but his No. 6 Ford steered clear of heavy damage.
After rallying from a penalty incurred as the result of a commitment cone violation early in the event, Ragan’s reward was an outstanding finish that backed up a fourth-place finish two races earlier at Talladega and lifted Ragan two positions to the coveted 12th-spot in the series standings.
It’s the first time since Ragan joined the Cup ranks full time in 2007 that he’s been in Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup standing at this point in the season.
“It's something to talk about and it's something to enjoy but guess what: in two more weeks everybody's going to forget about this race and be worried about the next one,” said Ragan, who nearly ran down Hendrick Motorsports’ Dale Earnhardt Jr. for fourth in the closing laps. “It can easily slip back and forth. This points deal's pretty tight.
"We don't have much breathing room in front of us and we don't have much behind us. [We're] just fortunate to have gotten some good runs and got a good start to the season.”
| | Posted May 11, 2008 , 8:30 pm EST
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