| | | | | | ROOKIE NO MORE | David Ragan feeling calmer as sophomore Cup contender | |
| | By SceneDaily Staff When David Ragan takes the track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway today in preparation for Sunday’s UAW-Dodge 400 Sprint Cup race, his No. 6 AAA Ford will bear a close resemblance to the one he wheeled in this race a year ago.
Familiar colors. Identical sponsor. Same number.
But a quick glance at the rear bumper of the 22-year-old’s red, white and blue machine will reveal a subtle, yet significant, difference. There’s no yellow stripe signifying his former status as a rookie in NASCAR’s premier series. It’s fair to say the second-year Roush Fenway driver is happy to be without the newcomer’s symbol in his second trip to the 1.5-mile Las Vegas track.
“One, it means you successfully made it through your first year and you have a job and you’re still around working your second year,” he said. “But the things that we learned that rookie year just help you so much. We’ve only been through two races so far this year and a few tests, but I can just tell that I’m a lot more calm, I know what's around the corner, I can make better decisions and we're going to be a lot more prepared this year. Last year things happened so fast, you really couldn't predict what was going to be around the corner.”
After getting off to a fast start with a fifth-place finish in the 2007 Daytona 500 — Ragan’s first race in the No. 6 made famous by Mark Martin – the first-year driver struggled to find the consistency necessary to contend for wins. He finished a distant second behind eventual rookie-of-the- year Juan Pablo Montoya while mustering a mere trio of top-10 finishes in 36 starts and crumpling more than his share of equipment.
With the bumpy year behind him, Ragan wants to get his fortunes turned around this season. He rebounded from a disappointing 42nd-place result in the Daytona 500 with a 14th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., on Monday. The race, won by Ragan's Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards, marked the debut for NASCAR’s new car on a 1.5-mile track.
Ragan expects to improve on last season’s 37th-place finish at Las Vegas, a track with features similar to Auto Club Speedway. A crash in preseason testing reminded him, however, that trouble sometimes still lurks for less experienced drivers. But it didn’t blunt his expectations for better luck in his second Cup start at Vegas.
“Hopefully, we'll be able to unload faster, we’ll be able to make more practice laps, [and] I’ll be able to give the crew chief more information, where last year we had to rely on our teammates’ information and some of the different past years’ notes and different things,” Ragan said. … “Now I should be able to predict: I know what the car is going to do in the evening or what it’s going to do late in the run. 'It’s got this feel, so we need to make this adjustment.' And so I think as a combined effort with my team and myself we should have a better idea on the right and the wrong things to do. It’s all about not making mistakes and finishing races and getting points every week.”
| | Posted February 29, 2008 , 10:24 pm EST
Last Updated February 29, 2008 , 10:25 pm EST | | | | | | | | | | |
