CORDELE, GA- With the new home of the ARCA CRA series’ Speedfest being announced no earlier than nine days before the event, a record crowd and warm unseasonal weather provided a near-perfect homecoming for David Ragan to middle Georgia’s Watermelon Capital Speedway.

 

Most competitors got in a full afternoon of practice on Friday as Ragan had other commitments in the Charlotte area gearing up for Daytona and the NASCAR Sprint Cup series season. Ragan participated in the first two sessions of practice before flying back to Charlotte Friday evening while his David Ragan Ford, Shriners Hospitals for Children Super Late Model was prepped for Saturday and Sunday’s events at Watermelon Capital Speedway.
 

Free admission on Saturday for qualifying day brought out a great crowd to watch the 35 competitors circle the 4/10 mile, d-shaped oval. Ragan drew to be the 16^th car on track to qualify. He turned in a lap of 16.06 seconds knocking Kyle Busch from the top spot. Ragan’s lap was fast enough to put his name in the books as the new track record holder for Super Late Models at a racetrack that has not hosted a major event in over two years.

“I really didn’t expect to be that fast in qualifying! We mainly worked on race runs in practice and ended up with a pretty good balance there. I feel like our car is an even better piece for longer runs in the race,” said Ragan right before drawing a number 5, inverting him from the pole to the 5^th position on the starting grid.
 

The green flag dropped in front of a crowd of nearly 4,000 fans on Sunday afternoon. Ragan wasted no time in moving toward the front as he passed Erik Jones for the 4^thposition and then placed pressure on the top three positions. Cautions began to fly and shorter race runs slowed the progress of the David Ragan Ford, Ford. The field slowed at the 100 lap mark for a competition caution and half-way mark of the race. Ragan entered the pits in the fifth position and entered the track for the second half in the eleventh position as the David Ragan Ford team chose to take more tires than most of the other front runners. Ragan wasted no time in making his move back toward the front by moving into the third position by lap 120. Ragan then began to work on the leaders of Kyle Busch and Bubba Pollard. After a tense battle with Pollard, Ragan held off a charging Casey Smith and settled into the third position for the final laps.
 

“We had the best car through the third quarter of the race and I feel like we would have been the car to beat without all of those cautions there at the end. Bubba and Kyle are always fast at these races and it’s a great feeling knowing we had a shot to outrun those guys.”

For more information on David Ragan and his late model schedule, visit www.davidragan.com.