Front Row Motorsports Already Taking Strides With Unadilla’s David Ragan

STATESVILLE, N.C. – Front Row Motorsports entered the 2012 Sprint Cup Series season expecting to be strong on superspeedways, road courses and short tracks, and targeted intermediate tracks as places for improvement.  So, it’s worth noting that Unadilla’s David Ragan and the No. 34 team have back-to-back top-25 finishes at tracks where they hoped for the most progress.

Ragan is making an impact at his new team in the early weeks of the season, earning a 21st-place finish at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway and a 25th-place finish at Phoenix (Ariz.) International Raceway in the last two race events.  After opening the season with a disappointing early wreck in the Daytona 500, the team has fought back to climb from 43rd to 30th in the owner point standings.

“I’m proud of our ’34’ team and the decent runs we’ve had over the last two weeks.  Obviously, we were really disappointed with how our season started in Daytona, getting wrecked on the second lap, and that put us in a hole going into the second week,” said Ragan. “But everybody pulled it together and we came back strong.  I came to Front Row Motorsports knowing that we’d have our work cut out for us at places like Phoenix and Vegas.  So, getting top-25s at both of those was a good step.”

“(Crew chief) Jay Guy called a great race at Las Vegas,” he added. “I think we could’ve done better actually, but that’s a good thing.  That means we’ve got some stuff we can work on for the next mile-and-a-half track and we can expect to do even better.”

The No. 34 crew now heads to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Food City 500.  Ragan has 10 starts at the .533-mile oval, with one top-10 and two top-15 finishes.  His best Cup career finish at Bristol is 10th (2008).  He also has a win at Bristol in the Nationwide Series (2009).

“I don’t know what driver doesn’t like going to Bristol.  It’s just a fun place.  The fans are right on top of you and they get really loud and rowdy.  I’ve won there in the Nationwide series and it’s always fun going back to a place where you’ve been to Victory Lane,” Ragan said.

“Bristol is the type of place where Front Row can do well.  The team has brought fast cars there in the past, I know (teammate) David Gilliland has topped the practice charts in the past there, so I’m really looking forward to it.  I think we can be competitive and be in the middle of the action all day.”