David Ragan Takes First Checkers at Crapshoot 400 in Daytona

Racin’ with Russ - While David Ragan was celebrating winning his very first NASCAR Sprint Cup race on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway, seventh place finisher Kevin Harvick was being interviewed, saying, “It’s just a crapshoot out there, knowing when to be where.”

No truer words were ever spoken, as most high speed plate races are just that…a crapshoot. It’s a roll of the dice as who to dance with and when to make that final charge to the front, with obviously the best results in mind. Too soon, and you’ll be passed. Too late, and you’ve missed the opportunity. But it’s nearly impossible to predict who’s with who, when they’ll pull the trigger or which lane they’ll chose, all important factors in winning.

The Florida night time spectacle was very quiet and mundane for the first three-quarters, with neatly arranged pairings zipping around the big track—until the final few laps.

With Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin hiding deep in the pack for most of the race, they pulled the trigger to get to the front with a handful of laps remaining.

Well into the top 10, they hit the firestorm while in the middle of a three-a-breast situation when Gordon got turned by Kasey Kahnel. Yet the four-time champ pulled off quite a save by not being hit by the rest of the pack.

The final two green-white-checker restarts saw a pile of cars get destroyed, the product of the nature of the beast…plate racing. Ragan was able to stay among the top five with teammate Matt Kenseth right on his bumper.

Ragan was reminded not to change lanes before the start/finish line, something he did at this year’s Daytona 500, more than likely taking the big day away from the young Roush-Fenway driver.

As the final green flag waved, Ragan was able to slowly move away with Kenseth providing the extra push to carry Ragan to his very first Cup victory, as two additional big wrecks took place in their rear view mirror.

When the smoke and flames literally came to a halt, NASCAR officials determined Joey Logano, Kahne and Kyle Busch wrapped up the top five finishers with a miraculous sixth place run by Gordon after restarting deep in the pack.

Note: Coming into this event, Carl Edwards topped the points by 25 over Harvick. After being turned by teammate Greg Biffle early in the show, Edwards limped home in 37^th, falling one spot behind new leader Harvick—but just by five points.

This year’s Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne became the first victim of errant “pushing” when Brad Keselowski turned the young driver into the fence and out of the show before lap 10.

Editor’s Note: I’ve been watching plate racing for many years and most times when the race is over, I walk away shaking my head in disgust at all of the carnage and unnecessary injuries that have often taken place.

This week, in both the Nationwide and Cup races, it was as if there was a 43-car demolition derby and a race broke out. Most of these incidents are faultless and chalked up as racing incidents, but they are the result of current rules managing how the cars are shaped and run.

Readers ask me all the time which do I like better, when the rules were such that the whole pack was in one long choo-choo train or the current two-car tango? They both required timing and a lot of luck, read crapshoot, to get into the winner’s circle. Both styles result in numerous “big one” wrecks and to me and many others really don’t exhibit a drivers true talents.

What do you think? Drop me a line.

Nationwide

This Friday night race, like its Saturday night counterpart was filled with a field of two car packs and ended with a big wreck—cars everywhere and a bit of time for NASCAR to sort out the results.

In the end, it was Joey Logano taking his ninth career checkers with the help of teammate Kyle Busch pushing him there. Finishing behind Logano at the stripe were the cars of Jason Leffler, Reed Sorensen, Busch and Justin Allgaier.

The race began with all four of Kevin Harvick Nationwide cars qualifying one through four. Several of them led during the race, but in the end all of them wound up on the hook, the result of numerous wrecks.

Sorensen now leads the points, but only by a small margin over Elliott Sadler and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

From Rumorville

Despite GoDaddy.com being sold for over $2 billion dollars, the new owners insist they will continue to back Danica Patrick in her future racing endeavors, whether they include Indy Car or NASCAR.

That’s it for this week. Next week’s RWR will review the Cup, Nationwide and Truck action from Kentucky along with more racing news from around the globe.