David racing through the field on Sunday
It almost looked as if the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series was going to leave Talladega Superspeedway without the dreaded ‘big one’ happening, but the key word there is, almost.
David Ragan and the UPS team were able to stay out of most of the on-track incidents that happened on Sunday, and come away from the 2.5-mile Alabama track with a 17th-place finish.
David didn’t have much to say on the radio during the race as far as how the car was handling, so pit stops for the UPS team were pretty much routine. Most stops were just for four tires and fuel, and the team only made minor adjustments to tighten the No. 6 up just a bit throughout the race.
The majority of the race saw the 43-car field racing single file, as NASCAR announced an hour before the race that bump drafting in the turns would not be tolerated. Teams also received smaller restrictor plates for the weekend to help slow down the cars and prevent them from going airborne after contact the way they did at Talladega earlier this season.
Once the laps began to wind down, David battled inside of the top 10, and made his way up to third position until there were eight laps left in the race. At that point, drivers began to change what lane they were driving in, so the draft switched and a good portion of the field flew by the lane David was racing in, pushing him down into the 20s.
With six laps to go, the race was red-flagged when Ryan Newman’s car flipped end-over-end in turn three. His car flipped onto its roof, but Newman was able to walk away from the accident without injury.
Once the race went back under yellow, the field was set for a green-white-checkered finish. But, because drivers were beginning to run out of fuel, NASCAR called off the green flag twice, forcing David into the pits to top his UPS Ford off with fuel. He made a very quick stop in the pits and was back inside of the top 20 when the race went back to green.
As the field was coming out of turn four on the final lap, multiple cars were sent spinning across the track. David was one of the cars caught up in that mess, and was sent spinning in the grass. He was able to avoid making contact with any other cars and crossed the finish line in 16th position.
“Our UPS Ford was pretty fast, but we were just at the mercy of everyone around us,” said David after the race. “It was just kind of a terrible race today in general. There was a lot of single-file racing, and I know it’s exciting there at the end, but what happens is NASCAR slows these cars down. They’re too easy to drive and everyone just gets kind of crazy. It’s a shame to tear up a lot of good race cars like that, but that’s restrictor plate racing. I’m glad we only have to do it three or four times a year.”
David and his teammate, Matt Kenseth, competed this weekend with the new Ford Racing FR9 engine for the first this season. Neither driver reported any issues and all seemed to go as planned with the engine’s debut.
“The new engine performed great, and we didn’t have any issues,” continued David. “We ran cool all day and had good power with great fuel mileage. It’ll be interesting to see when those guys get back to North Carolina. They’ll look at the valve train and the inside, but from where I was sitting it was pretty good.”
David and the UPS team head back to Texas Motor Speedway next weekend for the Dickies 500 on Sunday. Be sure to check back here later in the week for a special announcement about next weekend’s race.
Routine stop for the UPS crew
