No. 34 Taco Bell Team Needs Change of Luck for Race No. 5
STATESVILLE, MARCH 18, 2014 – David Ragan, driver of the No. 34 Taco Bell Ford, comments on racing at Auto Club Speedway:
“California is a fun racetrack. It loses grip throughout the course of a run. You put on new tires and you feel like Superman for a few laps. It’s very bumpy and there are a lot of different grooves you can run around.
“Usually for qualifying, you want to be right down on the bottom. That’s where the grip’s at. But throughout the course of the weekend, that groove widens out. So, by the time ‘Happy Hour’ rolls around on Saturday for the Sprint Cup cars, you can definitely move around to the middle and the top. A lot of times you can get your car to run faster on the bottom, but it is harder on the tires.
“We’ve had a bit of a rough start to our season on the 34 team. We’ve had a couple mechanical issues, but we’ve also had some plain old bad luck, too, getting caught up in other people’s mistakes. The next couple weeks will be important for us to turn things around.”
JUST THE FACTS: Ragan has 11 Sprint Cup career starts at Auto Club Speedway … His best finish at the two-mile oval is seventh (2009) … The black and purple paint scheme of Taco Bell returns at Fontana.
@DavidRagan on the rough @ACSupdates: ‘You put on new tires and you feel like Superman for a few laps.’ #NASCAR
About Front Row Motorsports
Front Row Motorsports is a race-winning organization competing in the NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup Series, fielding the No. 34 of David Ragan, the No. 38 of David Gilliland and the No. 35 Ford. The team is owned by Bob Jenkins and is headquartered just outside of Charlotte, N.C. FRM was named to INC Magazine’s “INC 5000” list in 2012, recognizing the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The team’s 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, Farm Rich, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s. Visit teamfrm.com.