David Ragan at Martinsville Speedway
David Ragan and the UPS team earned their best finish of the season and David’s best-ever finish at Martinsville Speedway with Sunday’s eighth-place result.
After taking the green flag from the 14th position, the UPS Ford started out just a bit snug in the center of the corners, but otherwise, had pretty good handling around the half-mile track. The first couple pit stops of the race didn’t involve too many changes, just small air and track bar changes to help the car in the center of the turns.
As the race progressed, Crew Chief Drew Blickensderfer and the UPS team made additional wedge and air changes as the track began to build up rubber from the tires. David maintained a spot inside of the top 10 for almost all of the first 326 laps of the race, and when green-flag pit stops began to filter through with less than 200 laps remaining, David came into the pits for a regularly scheduled stop. Once he was back out on track, the UPS team had fallen a lap down and had to fight to get the Lucky Dog award and their lap back.
David did get his lap back when the caution came out on lap 371. As the race neared the end, the team began to save fuel, but another caution came out and David pitted for tires and fuel and was back out on track in the ninth position. From then on, David battled inside of the top 10 and passed two additional drivers with just 10 laps remaining to finish eighth.
“It was a long day, but I felt like we had a top 10 car going into the race,” said David after the race. “If we could have caught a couple of lucky breaks, we might have had a shot to finish in the top three or four. We got hung out there on one of the green flag pit stops and got put a lap down, but we were fortunate to make it back and pass a lot of cars. To end up in the top 10 is certainly a good run. Our UPS Ford was very fast and Drew really made some good pit calls there at the end when things were cycling through with those green flag pit stops to be on the good side of things. It was a good day and our car was a top-10 car.”
David and the UPS team move up four spots in points to 18th as they head to Texas Motor Speedway for next weekend’s Samsung Mobile 500. Be sure to catch the race on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Fox.
David Ragan and the UPS team move up to 18th in points
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