Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona 500 Advance | Wednesday, February 9, 2022
David Ragan will be driving the No. 15 Ford Mustang for Rick Ware Racing in next week’s Daytona 500, marking the 16th consecutive year he’ll compete in The Great American Race. He was a guest today on a NASCAR Zoom call to discuss the opportunity and his plans for the rest of 2022.
DAVID RAGAN, No. 15 Ford Mustang – WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO COME BACK AND DRIVE THIS RACE AND WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO PREPARE TO DRIVE THIS NEXT GEN CAR? “When I retired from full-time racing a couple of years ago I really wasn’t tired of the driving part. That was the fun part and kind of the easy part on the course of the weekends, but I was just tired of the travel and the commitments from the sponsors and the manufacturers and, really, the grind of the schedule. It distracted me from trying to be a good husband and a good father, so I indicated that when the situation was right I would love to pop in and run a race here or a race there. I ran a couple of truck races for David Gilliland Racing I think two years ago, and the Daytona 500 is such a big race. I love going down to Daytona in February and everything just came together. We had a partner with Select Blinds that has been a partner of ours for the last couple of years, so that makes it a lot more easy to do when you have a sponsor that you already have a relationship with, and then with my relationship with Ford it needed to be in a Ford Mustang and Rick Ware Racing had that open car that was locked in that had a charter that he was gonna rotate some drivers throughout the year, so it was really just a perfect set of circumstances that allowed me to scratch the itch of going back to the racetrack again in something that’s gonna be competitive, that aligns with my Ford relationship and having Select Blinds.com on the car all made it possible. As far as driving the Next Gen car, I feel like I’ve gotten to make as many laps as anyone over the last year-and–a-half. I’ve done all of the testing for Ford in their wheel force transducer car, and so we got to run a lot of different racetracks last year, helping the teams develop some of the models that they’re using for their simulation, so I’ve got to run a lot of laps and while that doesn’t always feel the same as a race situation, that’s another reason why I wanted to enter into a couple of races this year just to give me some experience actually racing the car. I feel like that will allow me to give better feedback to all the Ford engineers this year as we continue to develop the Ford Mustang.”
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR OTHER RACE WILL BE THIS YEAR? “We’re definitely gonna run both Daytona races and maybe one or two more. I would love to run a short track. I’m thinking about maybe the Atlanta race. That’s my hometown track. We don’t have anything confirmed yet, but after we get through the Daytona 500 we’re gonna look at the schedule and see what makes sense. For my schedule, I’ve got to get approval from my family and make sure it works with Rick Ware and his driver rotation going through. Three or four races would be ideal for me to have a little bit of fun, get a little bit or experience racing this new car, but not take away from my normal duties with Ford Performance.”
WHAT EFFECT DOES THE WEEKLY GRIND HAVE ON A DRIVER LIKE YOURSELF? “It is a grind. It’s something that you really have to be intentional with your time away from the racetrack and really make it count. Everybody balances that a little different. For me, when I first started racing full-time I was 20 years old and I didn’t have a family. I could be on the road seven days a week and it was OK with me. I didn’t have any pets at home. I had a roommate at my house, so I could go and come as I pleased and it was no issue at all. I wanted to be at the racetrack. I ran a full season of Cup, a full season of Xfinity and some short track races scattered in, so I was just going. But as you get a little older and you start a family, you get married, you have kids, you have some other responsibilities, it is hard to focus and put 100 percent effort in all of those areas. You have to have good people that support you, whether that’s a motorhome driver or an assistant, a really good PR rep that can help manage your schedule. I felt like having a well managed schedule was important for me. I worked three or four months ahead to where I could plan ahead for family events, for sponsorship events, for racing events, so I knew what I was doing. I didn’t waste any time. I could be intentional with my rest time. I could be intentional with my time with my team. I would be intentional with my training or time at the race shop, so I think just having a well-balanced team around you that can support that is what made it easier for me, but then ultimately as my kids got older I realized that I couldn’t personally commit to being the best race car driver I could be without my family life suffering, and I couldn’t be the best father and husband without my racing world struggling, and it wasn’t fair to sacrifice one of those, so ultimately I made the decision to just not race full-time. Every driver is different. Every family dynamic is a little bit different, but that’s the thought process that I had over my career and then the last couple years as I wound down the full-time racing.”
WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE ABOUT THE NEXT GEN CAR? “I love the look of the Next Gen car. That’s the first thing that stands out to me. When you walk into the garage and you see the bigger wheels just makes the car look more uniform. The character lines on the nose and the tail. You can look at a Ford Mustang and you know that it’s a Ford Mustang without even looking at the decals or the paint scheme, so I think that’s important to have that brand identity from a manufacturer’s perspective. I love the five-speed sequential gearbox. I think that will make restarts more exciting. Road course racing, the drivers will be able to be a lot more aggressive and have more options in their gear ratio selection, so I think you’ll see an increase in speed, maybe an increase in overtaking on restarts – things like that. The brake package is a lot better. The larger wheels allow the brake rotors and brake calipers to be bigger, so you can drive the car a lot harder into the corners. As far as some of the mechanical things, I don’t turn the wrenches or work on the cars like maybe I did when I was younger, so I don’t know if there’s a lot different there, but I love all of those aspects of the car and then as far as driving the race car, I feel like it’s similar in a lot of ways. The car does have some different tendencies with just how you slide the front tires, how you can slide the rear tires, what the car feels like going into a corner and kind of loading up with all the downforce pushing down onto the four tires. That’s something that each driver will have maybe a little different experience with, but I think in general the racing is gonna be similar at a lot of the racetracks. We saw at the Coliseum race that the cars are pretty tough as you can beat and bang and not have to worry about a lot of front end damage and having tire rubs and stuff like that, so I feel like everything has gone really smooth so far. Those are the few things that kind of stand out to me that I like about the car.”
WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE WATCHING THIS TRANSITION FROM THE OUTSIDE? “I’ve enjoyed doing the testing. I feel like I’ve had a small role in how this Ford Mustang specifically has been developed, and what information the teams have to hit the ground running and really fast pace their direction and how they’re gonna build and setup and race these cars. But most of the time when I’m sitting at home and watching the race, I don’t feel like I’m left out or have a fear of missing out. There’s a few occasions that the race starts at one of my favorite tracks – the Southern 500, the Night Race at Bristol – even watching the cars roll out into the Coliseum for the first time, I do have some jealousy like, ‘Man, I wish I was in one of those cars. I wish I could be there.’ It will be special to be at the Daytona 500. That’s great, but when they get out to California, Las Vegas, I’m gonna be extremely happy to be sitting at my house in North Carolina.”
DO YOU WATCH PAST DAYTONA 500s AND THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011? “Yeah, I thought about it out at the Coliseum this weekend. I was there and someone got a really good start in one of the restarts and actually cleared the outside lane and they moved up before the start-finish line to help set themselves up for turn one and it kind of flashed back through my mind for a second like, ‘Hey, they just changed lanes before the start-finish line.’ They didn’t advance their position, but they did move from the bottom of the top. Obviously, that wasn’t called and it probably wasn’t something that NASCAR was looking at, but I do think about that on occasion. It’s something that on restarts at Daytona I’m sure it’s always important to know who your friends are, what lane you would like to be in entering turn one, so I will go back and watch some of the races over the last couple of seasons. I don’t know that anything 10 years ago would really correlate to what we’re going to experience next week in Daytona. The racing does continue to evolve and the drivers evolve. The drivers you’re racing with now, some are different than what we had 10 years ago, so I will watch some racing just to kind of get my mind start thinking about different situations and how I will react, but with this car there will be a lot of unknowns. The Duels will be extremely important, so I absolutely plan on going back on that Friday and Saturday after the Duels are over and certainly watch some of those races again and see what I can learn.”
