NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Ragan Looks For Better Days
David Ragan is coming off a top-10 finish at Charlotte...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 20, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Finally winning a Sprint Cup race hasn't eased the pressure on David Ragan. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Now well into his fourth full season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, David Ragan is still trying to solidify his place in the sport.

As a rookie, he had an erratic start, with Tony Stewart calling him “a dart without feathers” after a run-in at Martinsville Speedway.

Things turned around in Ragan’s sophomore season of 2008, when he narrowly missed the Chase for the Sprint Cup, finishing 13th in points and earning praise as the next big thing. Stewart, in fact, called Ragan the most improved driver in the Cup series.

Then, disaster.

Ragan began 2009 with a strong sixth-place finish in the Daytona 500, but would go 29 consecutive races without another top-10 finish, ending the year a career-low 27th in points.

This year hasn’t been much better: Ragan is currently 24th in points, once again the only Roush Fenway Racing driver to miss the Chase. And after 141 Sprint Cup races, Ragan is still looking for his first series victory.

But there may be hope on the horizon.

Ragan heads to Martinsville this week coming off a 10th-place finish in the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. That was his second top-10 finish of the year and the first since finishing sixth at Talladega in April.

The addition of new crew chief Drew Blickensderfer, who late last month replaced Donny Wingo, seems to have made a tangible difference in Ragan’s performance.

“It feels good,” Ragan said. “As a whole, our company is better and certainly the 6 car in the last four or five weeks has qualified better and raced a little better. We don’t have all the finishes to show for it, but our on-the-track performance has been more competitive and that certainly feels good.”

Ragan said changing crew chiefs has been a plus, because it got the team re-focused. “I can’t pinpoint one thing, but I think it’s a combination because Drew brings some good energy to the team,” said Ragan. “He’s certainly passionate about running well. He’s not afraid to make some changes and I think when someone new comes in, everybody is a little more aware of what’s going on and we all step our program up.”
Drew Blickensderfer (Pictured) won the 2009 Daytona 500 as crew chief for Matt Kenseth. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

According to Ragan, he was not unhappy with the job Wingo did, but was ready for a slightly fresh look at what was going on within the team.

“Sometimes a new face gives us a new perspective and things tend to change a little bit,” Ragan said. “This sport that we’re in, it’s a team sport. If you change a couple pieces to that puzzle, sometimes you get different results. Everyone has worked hard all year long, so it’s good that we’ve got a little momentum and hopefully we can carry it on for a few weeks.”

For now, the Ragan-Blickensderfer pairing remains an experiment, with no guarantees for 2011.

“We’ll probably re-evaluate that after Homestead,” said Ragan. “I’m sure myself, Drew, Robbie Reiser (team competition director), and Jack (Roush, team co-owner) will talk about that, but as of right now, we’ve done great together and I think we’ll only get better. A lot of things change in a big company like Roush Fenway Racing. There’s always a lot of stuff that happens over the off-season, so time will tell, but we’re really focused on Martinsville and then we’re gonna be focused on Talladega. After the dust settles at Homestead, we’ll look at everything and make that decision for our UPS team.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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