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Updated May 12
David Ragan has arrived.
Oh, he's probably not championship material quite yet, but his career has taken a steep climb upward in his second season in the Cup Series.
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| David Ragan rebounded from his Daytona disaster, climbing to the top 12 in points. (Getty Images) |
For the naysayers, the Daytona 500 looked to be the beginning of the end for Ragan's tenure with Roush. He finished 42nd, wrecking teammate Matt Kenseth in the process.
But Ragan persevered and he followed the Daytona debacle with a 14th-place run at California and seventh at Las Vegas. And there have been more solid runs, such as 11th at Martinsville, 13th at Texas and fourth at Talladega.
Saturday night at Darlington Raceway, often described as the most challenging track on the schedule, Ragan finished fifth for his second top five and third top 10 in 11 races, already matching his season totals from a year ago. It also moved him into the top 12 in the point standings.
"That's an awesome run," Ragan said. "Whether we were at Daytona, Talladega or Richmond or Bristol, that would be great, but to do it at Darlington is just something special. Darlington is an awesome track. You're running laps out there and you think about the guys that made this place famous like Cale Yarborough and Bill Elliott and David Pearson and people like that. It just makes you realize how fortunate we are to come out here and race at such a cool track.
"Our pit crew did an awesome job. We picked up spots every time, and it was an overall great run. We're getting this deal somewhat figured out. We've had some good race cars, we just have to fine tune a little bit to try and win one of these things."
Power Rankings after Darlington:
| POWER RANKINGS | ||
| Current | Driver | Previous |
| 1 | Kyle Busch | 1 |
| Not that he has been shabby at the intermediate tracks, but only two of his eight wins have come at a track of 1½ to 2 miles. | ||
| 2 | Carl Edwards | 2 |
| Busch didn't seem to think Edwards did much outside of the intermediate tracks. Probably didn't realize he's the defending event champion at Bristol. | ||
| 3 | Jimmie Johnson | 3 |
| His car had fallen off quite a bit even before contact with Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon forced him to the pits and dropped him a lap down for a majority of the second half. | ||
| 4 | Tony Stewart | 4 |
| He had a rough go of it at Michigan, finishing 12th with only 43 laps run in the top 15. | ||
| 5 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | 5 |
| Team needs to learn to finish off races if he's going to be a true championship contender. | ||
| 6 | Matt Kenseth | 8 |
| Despite a fifth-place finish, he wasn't very pleased with the team's performance Sunday. | ||
| 7 | Kasey Kahne | 6 |
| After starting 32nd, he was making slow progress forward until his engine let go. | ||
| 8 | Kevin Harvick | 11 |
| The 29 team is coming together at the right time with four top 10s in the past five races. | ||
| 9 | Jeff Burton | 10 |
| Another solid, albeit unspectacular, finish has him just about locked into the Chase. | ||
| 10 | Greg Biffle | 12 |
| Another good run to keep him solidly in the top 12. He can't rest easily yet, but he should feel pretty good about his chances of making the Chase. | ||
| 11 | Jeff Gordon | 7 |
| He was happy with his car for the first time in several weeks, but his pit crew let him down, putting him back in the position that led to the contact with Johnson and, ultimately, a blown tire. | ||
| 12 | David Ragan | 13 |
| Third-place run puts him very much in the thick of the hunt for one of the final spots in the Chase field. | ||
| 13 | Denny Hamlin | 9 |
| Over the past 14 races he has five top 10s and eight finishes of 23rd or worse. | ||
| 14 | Brian Vickers | 14 |
| Picks up his first pole with Red Bull and his sixth top 10, surpassing last year's total. | ||
| 15 | Martin Truex Jr. | 16 |
| His average finish this season is 16th, exactly where he finished at Michigan. | ||
| 16 | Clint Bowyer | 15 |
| He needs to take advantage of the upcoming race at Bristol, where he has three consecutive top 10s and two consecutive top fives, if he's going to make the Chase. | ||
| 17 | Elliott Sadler | 17 |
| Team still needs to work on its consistency, but they've definitely seen an uptick in performance over the past couple of months. | ||
| 18 | Mark Martin | 18 |
| Spent most of the afternoon outside the top 10, but surged forward over the final 20 laps, just missing out on a top five. | ||
| 19 | Jamie McMurray | 20 |
| The worst of the Roush-Fenway drivers at Michigan with a 10th-place finish. | ||
| 20 | Ryan Newman | 19 |
| The 12 team appears as if it has just about thrown in the towel with Newman set to leave at season's end. | ||
