David Ragan and the UPS team started from the eighth position on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, and for the two-car tandem racing style this season has seen at restrictor plate races, Ragan teamed up with Matt Kenseth from the very beginning of the race. The two had a plan to work together coming into the weekend and stuck to the plan until the final laps of the race.
The two Roush Fenway Racing drivers found each other immediately on track and almost made a repeat performance of the Daytona race in July. Connected nose to tail the entire race, the two moved around throughout the field to find the best line and to also gauge how many laps it would take to pass certain groups of cars running in packs in order to be prepared for the end of the race.
On lap two, Ragan took the lead with Kenseth stuck right behind him. The two drivers switched positions in order for both teams to lead a lap for bonus points. From then on, the success of drivers moving to the front was in the hands of the driver pushing them in the tandem. While only needing to pull back from the field or out of line in order to get thetemperature down in their cars, Ragan and Kenseth were fixtures in the top 10 for almost the entire race.
With Kenseth and Ragan surviving each caution that came out for multi-car accidents, the final restart for the race came with two green laps remaining. Before the race was back to green, Ragan radioed to the crew and his spotter to check the sides of his car. When Regan Smith crashed into the wall in front of Ragan just a few laps earlier, he said that he did hit some debris and wanted to make sure his car was okay. Ragan was lined up 13th for the restart, but when the field went to green, the UPS Ford was at a loss for power and Ragan began to fall through the field. He dropped down to 28th for the final lap, which was where he crossed the finish line when the checkered flag flew.
“We’ll have to look at it,” said a frustrated Ragan after the race. “Our engine ran well all day; our car was fast and I think we had an opportunity to win. We just did not have the power. I don’t know if when that wreck happened we ran over something and it knocked a plug wire off or what happened. It was a good day, just a bad finish. Luck just wasn’t on our side.”
Ragan and the UPS team travel from the biggest track on the circuit to the smallest as they head to Martinsville Speedway next weekend sitting 18th in points. Be sure to catch the race at 1:30 pm Eastern Time on Sunday.
Ragan and Kenseth were partners all race at Talladega Superspeedway
No comments:
Post a Comment