Ragan Looking To Go From Back To Front At Bristol

David Ragan, driver of the No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion, will start 41^st in tomorrow’s Food City 500, but he rebounded from yesterday’s qualifying effort to post the fourth-fastest time in the first of two practice sessions on Saturday. Ragan spoke about the ups-and-downs so far this weekend after the second practice.

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion – “Yesterday I looked like I had never been to this place. We were pretty slow yesterday and I think we’re just trying a lot of stuff to keep developing our cars and our chassis and it just wasn’t good enough. We changed a lot of things and Jimmy (Fennig) is always good at taking a car that isn’t that fast and finding some speed in it, so I feel like we’ve got a solid top-10, top-12 or top-14 car, but we’re gonna have to come from the back. It should be fun for the fans. I’ve just got to drive a smart race and hopefully we have a little bit of luck and not get caught up in somebody else’s wrecks, but I feel like our UPS Ford is a good car.”

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE CONSISTENCY OF YOUR CAR TODAY AND NOT JUST ONE FAST LAP? “Yeah, I’m pretty happy. We can always be a little bit better, but it’s really good on the get-go. It can be better on the long runs, but, again, even in practice we try to throw a lot of stuff at it to see what direction we need to go. We saw some things that hurt and saw some things that helped, so Jimmy can make some decisions on how to make it good for 500 miles.”

IS YOUR BIGGEST CONCERN STARTING FROM THE BACK NOT GETTING LAPPED EARLY? “Yeah, just being able to pass and the new track here makes it certainly more passer-friendly than in year’s past, so as long as you don’t catch guys side-by-side where you can’t get around them, that would be the worst thing to do is go a lap down early. But as long as we can maneuver around. We’re gonna have to pass on the top side and we’re gonna have to pass on the bottom. We did it last year in the fall coming from the back and we finished 10^th, so we should be able to do it again.”

IS IT FUN COMING FROM THE BACK OR STRESSFUL? “It’s stressful, but you’ve got to make it fun. You can’t get too worried about what’s gonna happen with other people in racing, you’ve just got to go out and do your own thing. Things are gonna happen, but as long as we can control what we can control I think we’ll be fine, but it’s a lot of fun.”