David and the UPS team have the weekend off from racing. What are your plans for the weekend?

Atlanta Motor Speedway is home to both David and UPS. We want to know, what is your home track?

David is getting ready at the shop to head down to Daytona next week for media day, practice and qualifying for the Daytona 500.

Let us know what you did over the off season. Leave a comment below!

We hope you are all having a great off-season. Things are staying very busy on our side to get things ready for the 2010 season.

After taking a look at the calendar, not only are the holidays right around the corner, so is David Ragan’s birthday! David will turn 24 on December 24 next week, so we wanted to invite all of you to leave David a message below in the comments wishing him a happy birthday.

David is currently on his way back home to Georgia for the holidays, so we want to get as many messages as we can for him to read on his birthday.

Thanks, and have a great holiday season!

Sam at work during a UPS pit stop

Sam Gibson is the front tire carrier for the No. 6 UPS team. Before leaving for Talladega, Sam took some time to talk with UPS Racing about his job at Roush Fenway Racing.

How did you get into the sport?

I knew a friend working for a different team that got me a job in 2000. Five years later, I started at Roush with the No. 6 Truck. From there, I moved over to the No. 17 Nationwide team before moving up to the No. 6 Cup team.

What’s your favorite part about being on a NASCAR team?

My favorite part would probably be the traveling and getting to see different parts of the country.

What’s your normal “run of show” during the week?

During the week I work in the shop tearing down cars, building suspensions, puttin in motors, and have pit crew practice.  When I’m not working I enjoy just relaxing and hanging out and going to the movies.

What are your normal responsibilities once arriving to the track each weekend?

Once I get to the track, I prep the tires for the race, get them to the pit box, lay them all out, and clean them. After all my work is done, I help anyone else out that may need it.

What are you responsible for during the actual race?

I’m the front tire carrier

Anything significant about the upcoming weekend?

It’s a restrictor plate track where I a lot can happen fast, but David runs really well there.

If you weren’t working in racing, what do you think you would be doing?

I would probably be a chef at a restaurant or working at an auto dealership.

Where did you grow up?

Boone, NC

What’s your favorite thing to do on an off-weekend?

On off weekends, I go to the lake to go surfing.

Something interesting about yourself?

I enjoy yoga even though the guys make fun of me about it.

Favorite Movie: Any Vince Vaughn movie

Favorite TV Show: Californication

Favorite Cartoon as a Kid: Curious George

Favorite Pizza Toppings? Greek pizza

Favorite Place to Eat? Fusion Bowl

Favorite Music: Dave Matthews, Metallica, Korn, Chevelle

Sam during pre-race with the rest of the UPS team

David had a good car until a tire going down hurt our track position, but ultimately, he ended on the lead lap in 20^th. This weekend is Martinsville, which is another race close to home. That is something that we always enjoy. Plus, it’s a short track, and David likes short tracks. Hopefully the weather will be warmer and we’ll get a good finish!

On Tuesday, David filmed an episode for CMT ‘Cribs.’ It’s funny how 5-7 minutes of what you see on the air takes about 10 hours to shoot. David wasn’t on camera that whole time, but he did take them on a tour of his house and his race shop. Once he was done, I stuck around with Alexis while the production crew took a lot of b-roll shots. It made for a pretty long day. I think it will all turn out really good and everyone will have to check it out in January when it airs. We don’t know what day it’s going to air yet, but we’ll keep you up to date when we find out.

Having 10 hours of filming creates some down time, so we had a little fun while waiting at David’s shop……check out some of our photos!

Nancy at Roush Fenway Racing

We are off to Richmond this weekend. It’s the final weekend to see who makes the Chase, unfortunately we’re on the outside looking in, but we wish the best of luck to our Roush Fenway teammates and hope the No. 99, No. 17 and No. 16 make the Chase. Last year we almost made the Chase, it came down to Richmond and we were sitting 13^th, but didn’t quite do well enough in the race to clinch a spot. At least Richmond is a good track for David, so we should have a pretty good showing. Last weekend in his hometown of Atlanta we had a decent UPS Ford, but two speeding penalties hurt our chances at a good finish. So everyone is ready to rebound this weekend.

As far as off-track stuff goes, I’ve been busy scheduling out sponsor appearances. We’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up and David has a few tests coming up as well. I actually ordered his 2010 firesuit this week. Crazy to think I had to do that already, but we’ve got our first photo shoot next month for Coke and need the new suit. David’s suits are from a company called Sabelt and they are located over in Italy. I like to give extra time for it to get produced and cleared through customs to get over here to me.

I saw Pedro this week! We were over at David’s shop filming a segment for Ford on their new 2010 Taurus. It’s a nice car and Pedro was welcoming and made his ‘donkey noise’ for the visitors to hear. He’s darkened up over the summer; I’ll have to take an updated photo to share with everyone before fall comes and he starts getting a thick winter coat.

That’s all for now!

-Nancy

Another off-weekend for the Cup Series! It’s nice, but seems like our off weekends are too close together. I think that they need to be spread out a little more. But, we’re on the home stretch now and there’s only 12 races left this season. Each year the season goes by faster and faster!

Things have been pretty normal back at the shop. David had a great run at Bristol in the Nationwide car and got his second victory of the season and followed it up with a 14^th-place finish in the Cup car. Overall it was a good weekend that hopefully kick-started some good luck for the rest of the year. Things haven’t exactly gone our way, but we’re all hoping that changes, especially heading to Atlanta next weekend.

Atlanta is home to David Ragan and UPS so we really want to get a good finish there. It’s also a big weekend for one of our other sponsors, Coca-Cola. Coke does a cool promotion each year where they have all their Coke Family drivers at the track with the Richard Petty Driving Experience. The Coke-sponsored drivers take contest winners around Atlanta Motor Speedway in two-seater cars. It’s pretty cool and last year I hopped in and rode with David around the track; it definitely gives you a different perspective of what he does every week. We’ll see what happens this year, I might do it again!

Well, I’m off to enjoy my last off-weekend of the season. Enjoy your weekend as well!

And one more important thing. Happy Founder’s Day UPS’ers! 102 years as a company is awesome and everyone at Roush Fenway loves working with all of you!

Having some time off at home was nice, but now things are back to normal. David and the UPS team have had a busy few weeks. Since Pocono got rained out, they had to drive straight from the track to Dover for a two-day tire test. After two more days at the track, they flew home Wednesday night and then headed to Watkins Glen Thursday afternoon. Lucky for me, I got to miss that trip. But, I did get stuck in the rain at both Pocono and Watkins Glen. Figures we would rain out two weekends in a row.

Remember in my last blog when I mentioned the Pocono golf tournament? Well my team (consisting of Richie, Sean, Steve and myself) came in fourth…I think. We finished somewhere around the front of the pack and there were about 24 teams. David’s team came in second, but he brought in ringers. Last year he competed in a long drive competition on the SPEED Channel. There were multiple events throughout the season and each driver was paired with a long drive guy. Well, David called up his partner from last year, who also brought his club pro friend down to play. They made the short trip from New Jersey to Pocono and played with David and Nick. The course pretty was hard and I’m not sure what team won, but they must have been pretty good.

Did anyone watch the Watkins Glen race? Dwayne, our rear-tire changer, got hit on our first pit stop. The No. 42 was pitted behind us and hit him as he was pulling out of his pit stall. Dwayne went down pretty hard, but got himself right back up and finished the stop. Afterwards, he went to the care center to get checked out. All is good now, he’s got some stitches in his elbow and is sore, but doing well. He’ll be back at it this weekend in Michigan!

Speaking of Michigan….it’s always a busy one. Michigan is Jack’s hometown track and Ford is located there as well. There will be lots of people at the track this weekend and it’s a place Roush has historically run well at. Maybe it will be our turn to get a win!

-Nancy

On our way back to Newark airport we found out our flight had been cancelled, so I called US Air (while sitting in traffic) and the best they could do for us was a flight out Thursday morning. I asked about Lagaurdia and they had a 9:40PM that was already delayed to 10:10PM. I put us on that and called Continental. Continental had a flight leaving at 8:30PM from Newark to Charlotte. I booked that for us, we got to the airport, checked in, went through security, got to our gate and then found out that flight got cancelled. They could only get us out Thursday morning so we had them switch us to that flight. David and I wound up getting a cab from Newark to Lagaurdia to try our luck at the delayed 9:40PM flight. Keep in mind, its down pouring and lightning all around. An hour later we arrive in Laguardia, check into our flight (get some ice cream, we’ve earned it by this time!) and begin to wait. We filmed David’s blog on our way to the gate (people were looking at us funny), be sure to check it out! From there we sat down at the gate through ground stops for the weather, gate changes and multiple delays of our flight. Luckily it didn’t get cancelled and we finally got on the plane around midnight and got back to Charlotte at 2AM. Once we landed back in Charlotte, I had to call and cancel our Continental flight, what a day! All this seems silly since in New Jersey we were so close we could have gone straight to Pocono, but we both wanted time at home Thursday before the team plane flew out. 

Last night me, David and some of the guys on the team went to a cookout at our old spotters house. It was fun just to hang out for a little bit, but I was sleepy from our Wednesday and Thursday adventure, so I called it an early night.

One thing that we always look forward to when we come to Pocono for the second time each season is the NASCAR Official’s charity golf tournament. I’m playing with Richie, Studer and Steve from the team. I haven’t played since February, so I’m hoping it won’t take too long to get my swing back.

Next week the team is heading to Dover, Delaware, Tuesday and Wednesday for a Goodyear Tire test and then to Watkins Glen Thursday, luckily I don’t have to go to tire tests. I’m heading home to upstate NY for the week to spend some time at home before Watkins Glen. 

I hope everyone has better luck flying than we do!  Talk to you soon!