Peanut Patch returns to the No. 34 team for its third race of the season, Saturday night’s Irwin Tools Night Race, one of the hottest tickets of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. The weekend will also include a stop at Food City Race Night, where Ragan will sign autographs on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. during the annual race festival in Bristol.
Ragan is familiar with Victory Lane at Bristol. He won at the track in the Nationwide Series in 2009. On the Sprint Cup level, the 27-year-old driver has one top-10 and two top-15 finishes at the half-mile oval. Saturday night’s race will be broadcast live on ABC at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Comments from Peanut Patch team driver David Ragan heading to Bristol:
“The Bristol night race is one of the premier races of our season. It draws the most fans and probably has the most hype around that race weekend. The excitement factor at Bristol alone is great. But you have a combination of it being a few races before the Chase starts and it’s a night race, and those factors make it one of the more exciting races of our season.
“We have had a pretty good track record at Bristol over the years. David Gilliland gets around that track pretty good, so we can lean on those guys some. And it’s one of the racetracks where mechanical grip is really important, and you’re not going fast enough for your aero package to be everything. So you have an opportunity to have fast cars and we can certainly have a strong run there. Five hundred laps is a very long race at that place and you have to have a good night on pit road and avoid all the wrecks. If we have a good-handling car, that can be a race weekend that we have a big day for us.
“To have Peanut Patch back on the car at Bristol is a lot of fun. We’ll be down at Food City Race Night on Thursday night with them. There’s always a big crowd and it’s always one of the bigger events of any NASCAR race weekend. Having Peanut Patch on our car for the night race with the nice bright colors will be cool to see. It’ll definitely look good under the lights.”
About Front Row Motorsports:
Front Row Motorsports fields the No. 34 of David Ragan, the No. 38 of David Gilliland and the No. 35 of Josh Wise in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The team is owned by Bob Jenkins and is headquartered just outside of Charlotte, N.C. In 2012, FRM was named to INC Magazine’s “INC 5000” list, recognizing the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., earning a rank of 800. Its partnership base is representative of more than $200 billion of the U.S. economy and includes organizations such as Ford Motor Company, CSX Transportation, Love’s Travel Stops, McCall Farms, Taco Bell, and Long John Silver’s. For sponsorship inquiries, contact Robin Johnson at rjohnson@frontrowmotorsports.com or Mike Laheta at mlaheta@frontrowmotorsports.com.
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NEXT RACE:
IRWIN TOOLS NIGHT RACE, BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
Saturday, August 24, 7:30pm ET (ABC, PRN, SiriusXM)