Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
2015 Daytona 500 Media Day
Thursday, February 12, 2015
DAVID RAGAN, No. 34 CSX Ford Fusion – HOW MANY GUYS CAN WIN THIS RACE? “I think all 43 have an opportunity to win but teams and equipment might take a few of them out. 500 miles is a test on your engine, your pit crews have to be flawless so realistically probably about 30 guys. I think we will have a good shot to win and we are going to be one of those teams mid-pack throughout practice and qualifying and we will have a shot to win if we can play our cards and strategy right and have a little luck. That is what is great about the Daytona 500. It is a long race and you have to be there at the end but there are opportunities for guys to win this race that might now have a chance to win at Atlanta.”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO HAVE A CHANCE HERE, IN SUCH A BIG RACE? “That is what makes this race so exciting and you see a guy that is maybe coming down here that doesn’t have any points or is with a new team. I know and I have had that feeling before where you can have a shot to win the Daytona 500 and that can be a career changing experience. Look at Trevor Bayne a few years ago with a good car, good team and the right set of circumstances and he is a Daytona 500 champion and he will always have that. This race is a very difficult race to win because of that reason. Because there are so many guys that have the opportunity and are capable of winning. You look at some other tracks we go to and look at Jimmie Johnson at Martinsville or Dover and you can about pick on one hand who will win the first Martinsville race because that is the way it is. Daytona is a very tough race to win because there are so many guys capable of winning it. And girls. Danica Patrick could with the Daytona 500. That is what makes it special for us coming down here being on a little smaller team. We have good race cars and good people and I feel I am a smart driver here at Daytona and I feel just as good as Jimmie Johnson does coming into this weekend and that is really powerful.”
WHAT IS FUN ABOUT BEING A RACE CAR DRIVER AND WHAT IS NOT FUN? “What is not fun is having to leave every Wednesday or Thursday and be gone through Sunday 38 weekends a year. As you get older and you have a family and kids you want to be around and watch them grow up. You take for granted just doing normal things like going to the grocery store. There is a little farmers market down the road that is only open on Friday’s and Saturdays and that pisses me off because I am always gone during the summer. That is what I don’t like about this sport, being gone from home. What is great is the competition and adrenaline when you are buckling into the car on Sunday afternoon and you know there are 43 of the best stock car drivers in the world that you are going to be going against. The one race you win or finish well, that is a feeling that you can’t duplicate doing any other thing. That is the pros and cons for being a Sprint Cup driver.”
WE HEAR ALL THE TIME ABOUT HOW YOU HAVE TO HAVE A GOOD TEAM TO WIN. TALK ABOUT THAT. “I have learned being a business owner and a team owner at the smaller level and certainly driving for different teams at this level that it is all about people. Typically your financial situation dictates what kind of people you can have and how many you can have. The best employees will get the best pay and benefits and the best results too. It is very important to have good people, not only at the top but all the way through your team. That guy that is bolting on the suspension on your race car is just as important as the guy putting fuel in your car on Sunday or the engineer calculating fuel mileage. Everyone has a critical role putting together a race winning or championship effort. That is why it is so big if you win a race or championship because everybody has done their job. It all comes down to dollars and cents and you have to have a lot more dollars and cents.”
YOU EVER DWELL ON HOW CLOSE YOU WERE TO WINNING THIS RACE? “Yeah, I think about winning the 500 a lot. It is a career changing event, good or bad and I think that for us to be leading on a green-white-checkered and be black flagged for what I still call a misinterpretation of the rule at the time was unfortunate. It has made me a better driver and a tougher person. I have also got a Christmas Even birthday so I have never gotten good birthday or Christmas gifts and that has made me tougher along the way as well. What was awesome is Trevor is a good friend of mine and I think a lot of the Wood Brothers and Ford and that was a great victory for them. It gives me motivation coming back down here. Hopefully I have a few more years I can contend for the Daytona 500 and I have been close before and have a couple top-five to show for it that it can be done and it gives me motivation.”
HOW WILL THE NEW CAR RULES AFFECT YOUR HOMETOWN TRACK, ATLANTA? “Not a lot different. I think the biggest thing at Atlanta will be less horsepower and downforce. I don’t know what to expect speed wise. Obviously going there in March the weather will be cooler than Labor Day so the track will have more grip so what you will gain in the track having more grip you will lose a lot of speed with less horsepower and downforce. Hopefully Goodyear has designed a tire that is equal to what we are taking on our race cars and still has the same amount of fall off. Racing at Atlanta is awesome. You have to put tires on every time you put a caution out. You have guys that are good on old tires and guys that can go hard on new tires. That is what makes good racing – having goers and comers and you can conserve your tires or drive hard depending on how many laps to the end or what your strategy is. I know for a fact that there can be nice weather in March in Atlanta. It can happen. It can be a beautiful 60 degree day too.”
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO MOST ABOUT THIS SEASON? “I like to take it one race at a time and the Daytona 500 is what I am looking forward to the most right now. After Daytona you kind of reset your goals and Atlanta is an important race. Seeing how the new rules package impacts the cars. I am a huge fan of the sport of NASCAR and it is very important for the health of our sport to get competition to stay close and the racing be as good as ever. I can’t wait for Atlanta, Vegas and Phoenix to see how this new rules package handles and what the next steps are. I know NASCAR is going to make some more changes the next few years so it will be interesting to see that and I can’t wait for the Daytona 500. That is the biggest race on our horizon right now.”
WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN AT ATLANTA? “That would be a huge day. That would be like Jeff Gordon winning at Indy. Atlanta is an important race and has been around for a long time but to win there would be special. I have won there in some legends car races and I even won a late model race there on the quarter mile one time. To go to victory lane in one of the NASCAR top three series’ would be a special day for our family.”
DO YOU FEEL RACING IS TRULY A TEAM EFFORT? “Oh yeah. The drivers do most of the talking on the radio and I think the ones that are disciplined enough to be courteous and motivated and have positive vibes on the radio certainly goes a long way. It is a team sport. The guy that is doing the smallest job in the garage on a Friday is just as important as a crew chief on a Sunday afternoon. Racing is definitely a team sport from top to bottom but sometimes the driver is the cheerleader and the quarterback and he and the crew chief have to keep the motivation there for everyone to keep working hard.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT THAT EVERYONE IS GETTING ALONG? “It is very important. You can have great guys on a team but if they aren’t working together or have different things going on in their lives or minds it just doesn’t get there. That is why you see different guys be successful at one team and one program and then they go somewhere else and are not as successful. It is important to have that chemistry in any sport and any business. You have to be focused on what you are doing and can’t have distractions that keep you from what you are doing. Having that chemistry, sometimes is there and sometimes not and it doesn’t matter how many classes you go to or lunches you take to the team. If you don’t have chemistry there is nothing you can really do to get it.”
WHEN IT COMES TO THIS RACE AND DRAFTING, EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE GOING AGAINST BIGGER TEAMS, WHEN IT COMES TO DRAFTING ARE ALL CARS ALMOST EQUAL? “Yeah, Daytona and Talladega are the most equal races you have because the draft is so important. You have to rely on other cars to get runs and to create speed and so at other tracks you are all on your own and it is all about rolling the corners and getting on the throttle and horsepower but here we are all equal because of the draft. Absolutely it is an equalizer that no doubt Jimmie Johnson’s car or team is stronger than what Front Row Motorsports can bring to the track because of their resources and the economics of our sport but when we unload at Daytona, I can’t describe to you how good I feel compared to what Jimmie Johnson feels or what Tony Stewart is going to feel because we have as good as shot to win as they do. If I can control what I can control on the race track we may have an even better shot to win. That is not the case at Martinsville or Dover or even Charlotte. So that is a great feeling coming to Daytona and knowing that the guys sitting right there next to you is a five or six time champion but we have as good as shot to win the Daytona 500 as he can.”
KNOWING THE 500 IS THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, DOES IT MAKE YOU WANT IT MORE OR IS IT MORE OF A FRUSTRATION. “It was a sense of frustration for the first year or six months after it happened because you realized how close we were to maybe turning my career around and maybe convincing UPS that they needed to stay in NASCAR and a lot of things could have went different. You can’t look back on things you can only learn good or bad from situations and it makes you tougher. It makes me excited knowing that I have been in that position before and it is hard and it is difficult but it is not something that is impossible. That gives me a lot of confidence. When I go to bed on Saturday night before the Daytona 500 I will sleep just as good as everybody else with a little baby in their motor home. If we do what we can do we could walk out of here with a Daytona 500 ring.”
HOW WILL THE COMPLEXION OF THE SPORT BE CHANGED WITHOUT JEFF GORDON? “It will certainly be change to a lot of the older guys and girls that have covered or race in this sport. They went through the same thing with Richard Petty retired and when we lost Dale Earnhardt. Champions have retired like Terry Labonte and Bobby Labonte and Mark Martin. The sport will continue to go on. This sport is bigger than any one person but it will be different not to have Jeff Gordon on the race track. He has been an advocate of our sport from day one and it will be weird. As long as I’ve known NASCAR Jeff Gordon has been a part of it. It is time for the younger guys and girls to pick up where he left off and move this sport along but NASCAR is bigger than any one person but it will definitely be different to see a Sprint Cup race without Jeff Gordon in it.”
DO YOU THINK THAT IS ONE OF HIS LEGACIES? THAT HE WAS A ADVOCATE FOR YOUNGER GUYS? “Yeah, a lot of guys’ statistic wise are right there with Jeff. David Pearson, Jimmie, Petty, Earnhardt but what Jeff has done from a spokesperson standpoint, philanthropy standpoint – Jeff has been a really good role model for young kids and everybody that has wanted to pursue NASCAR racing as driver, owner, mechanic maybe even a sponsor. He has been a great spokesperson for all his partners and given us someone to look up to. He has the track record that only a few drivers have but what he has done for the sport as a whole is pretty good.”
DO YOU THINK IT IS IRONIC THAT THE GUY THAT PAVED THE WAY FOR YOUNGER DRIVERS WILL BE REPLACED EVENTUALLY BY A GUY YOUNGER THAN HE WAS WHEN HE CAME IN? “I feel like it is meant to be that way. Chase Elliott comes from a rich bloodline of NASCAR racing and a champion. For him to take over the 24 car is a storybook ending for what the 24 car has become under Jeff Gordon’s banner. Chase is a great young kid and a very smart guy and I am sure will do an outstanding job and will probably be just as tough as Jeff was or has been when he gets in that car.”
“I look at Jeff Gordon as being one of the first but even Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth were guys at Roush that led the way. Roush had only had veteran drivers like Mark Martin and Chad Little and guys like that and I think when he first got Matt and then Biffle at young ages and even Kurt and Kyle Busch. I can remember seeing Kyle win his first race and I was getting ready to start one of my first ARCA races when Kyle won his first Cup race. People like that have paved the way and made it easier for me and younger kids to come through this sports.”
THINGS SEEM TO BE LOOKING REALLY GOOD FOR YOUR TEAM. “I think the team is in as good of shape as I have seen it in the three years I have been at Front Row. We have run three cars before but not funded like we have now. We are a long ways from being a Hendrick or Gibbs but our team owner has invested a lot of time and effort and some of it is paying off. We have three cars with good sponsors and good drivers. Cole (Whitt) is someone we have become friends with and a great addition,. A great talent and young kid that deserves a chance with a competitive team in the Sprint Cup Series. We have a lot going on and a lot of stuff going on for a shop that we have running three full time cars and doing all our work in house. All our chassis, bodies and setups are all in house. We don’t have an alliance with any of the larger teams. It is a great feeling and we have a lot of work to continue to do to sustain this so we don’t run out of fuel halfway through the year but it is a great feeling to be in Daytona with three very nice race cars, good crews and good programs to represent.”
YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN KNOWN FOR AWHILE AS THE LITTLE TEAM THAT COULD. ARE YOU SLOWING GROWING OUT OF THAT? “I think slowly. That win two years ago at Talladega was a big step in the right direction. A little consistency here and there and we have shown we got our first top-10 at a non-restrictor plate track at Martinsville. We are closing that gap but there is still so much to be done and that is what motivates us. We feel we are getting closer. Maybe NASCAR is doing the right things with some of the adjustments in the rules package this year but that will tell with time. Six months from now we will evaluate but we have good momentum on our side. Some of the bigger teams are struggling for sponsorship dollars and cutting back a little here and three we are growing a little and that is a good thing. It is a good trend. Hendrick Motorsports wasn’t created overnight. It was 25 years in the making and I think over the next several years and probably long after I am gone from this sport Front Row Motorsports has the potential to be a big player down the road.”
YOU AREN’T THINK ABOUT GETTING OUT ANYTIME SOON ARE YOU? “No, I am only 29 years old so if I can stay healthy and I can continue to keep a competitive ride I would love to race for another 10 years. I do want to have another life besides racing. I don’t know what that will be one day but I still have more races to win and more things to do before I think about slowing down.”
