Ragan crashes in practice, still feels like a contender

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Despite wrecking his primary No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford in Saturday morning's first practice at Martinsville Speedway, David Ragan still feels he has a shot to win Sunday's TUMS QuikPak 500.

"Oh, absolutely we can still win at Martinsville," Ragan said. "We started in the back at Bristol [in August] and finished 10th, and ran as high as sixth or seventh. We'll have a car that can win and a pit crew that can win and it'll be all about not getting caught up in somebody else's wreck and me not making a mistake throughout the race that'll hurt our chances."

It's a remarkable transformation for Ragan, who when he made his second career start here in October 2006 was called "a dart without feathers" by then-defending Cup champion Tony Stewart.

With only 69 career starts heading into Sunday's sixth race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Ragan has six top-fives this season and narrowly missed qualifying for the Chase in only his second full season.

"Obviously everybody's a rookie to start with and it all depends on how quickly you can learn and adapt to the different racetracks and to the competition," Ragan said. "We feel like we've adapted well and we've made progress, though obviously, from wrecking my car [Saturday] we're not perfect yet.

"I've still got some things to learn and I feel like I've still got some more progress to make to be a championship contender. But we're sitting here [13th in the standings] in some pretty good company and we haven't gotten here by just a fluke and being lucky -- we've been good a lot of weeks.

Ragan leads the unofficial "Chased-out" standings for drivers not in the Chase during the 10-race playoff, and after all of Friday's track sessions were rained-out, proved how good his car was when he clocked the third-best lap in the first practice.

The bad news came when he crashed in Turn 1 midway through the session.

"I just made one mistake and now we've got to go to a backup car," Ragan said. "I drove in a little bit too deep getting into Turn 1. I was just trying to drive as hard as I would in the race to try and give good feedback and just made a mistake.

"I didn't use good judgment on what we had -- we had a real good car. [We] will still be fine. It's gonna be fast. Jimmy [Fennig, crew chief] and the guys always prepare good racecars so, fortunately, there's still no reason why we won't be a contender on Sunday." (Continued)