Ragan hopes to rediscover magic with new crew chief

It all seemed so easy.

After finishing fifth in the Daytona 500 in 2007, his rookie season, David Ragan nearly earned a coveted spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup in 2008. It all seemed to be serving as a natural springboard for a bigger and better 2009.

David Ragan

Cup Stats (full seasons)

	2007	2008	2009
Wins	0	0	0
Top-5s	2	6	0
Top-10s	3	14	2
Laps Led	2	27	4
Lead-Lap Fin.	16	25	16
DNFs	4	2	4
Avg. Start	29.1	17.4	26.9
Avg. Finish	24.5	15.6	24.4
Points Rank	23	13	27

This time last year, in fact, Ragan was the chic pick to be a Chase party crasher. He was young, fast and on a steady move upward -- and a sixth-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500 did nothing but endorse this belief in his own mind and throughout the Sprint Cup garage.

"We were feeling really good about everything," Ragan admitted.

Two races later, the nightmare that would constitute most of the rest of the season began when Ragan's No. 6 Ford blew an engine, relegating him to a 42nd-place finish at Las Vegas. He wouldn't post another top-10 until grabbing seventh in the Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway seven months later. By then, all that could do was move him from 31st in the point standings to 28th.

It also was his last top-10 of the season, giving him 12 fewer than he posted in 2008. He also had six top-five finishes in '08 with Jimmy Fennig as his crew chief, but none in '09 -- prompting car owner Jack Roush to look at other options for the entire No. 6 team heading into 2010.

Roush ended up giving Fennig a new position higher up the company food chain, and bringing in veteran Donnie Wingo to be Ragan's new crew chief.

"The first thing I want to say is that Jimmy Fennig is a great crew chief and David would not have had the year he had in 2008 without Jimmy Fennig," Roush said. "Jimmy Fennig was absolutely the perfect guy to get David started, and he did a great job with him.

"In 2009, when they didn't hit it off right away, when they didn't have the success they wanted, it seemed to me that the communication wasn't as good as they wanted or as good as it had been in 2008. So that relationship, that chemistry between the two didn't advance as I had hoped that it would."

That was when Roush first started thinking about what he could do to make their situation better, and in his mind, hopefully the entire Roush Fenway Racing operation more efficient.

"When we looked at what we could to make ourselves better in 2010, we needed to have really strong management in research and development and all the wind-tunnel testing, and all the things that end up happening behind the scenes," Roush said. "So I had to pick a guy with great experience and great depth and great knowledge to lead that group. Jimmy Fennig was the perfect guy -- and it gave me an opportunity to try Donnie Wingo, who also has great experience and has had great success, with David Ragan.

"So we're going to try Donnie Wingo with David Ragan to see if we can reestablish the magic and the chemistry that Jimmy had with David when they were at their best, and move a step forward."

Roush pointed out that his entire stable of drivers struggled for the most part a year ago. He said Roush Fenway as a company spent too much time and money searching to find "that big home run" to take their cars to the next level, only to discover the hard way that perhaps no such grand slam exists with NASCAR's new car.

"David Ragan didn't forget how to drive a car. We just didn't get it right for him," Roush said. "And by the way, we didn't get 'em right for most of the year for Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle or Jamie McMurray, either. We were just off our game, and [the 6 team] was a part of that."

A year ago, Roush insisted that if Ragan didn't win some Cup races during the 2009 season, the young driver "would be the victim of unbelievable bad luck or mismanagement on my part if we let that happen. I'm determined not to mismanage him and hopefully the luck will work out for us."

Ragan admitted then he "would be devastated" if he didn't win some races. Well, he did win two -- in the Nationwide Series. But he never came close in Cup, which Ragan admits caused him some sleepless nights.

"It was devastating. If it wasn't for a couple of those Nationwide wins, it would have been an even harder year than it was," said Ragan, who ended up 27th in points last season. "I think Jack summed it up best when he said we got so concerned about hitting that next big home run that we weren't as concerned about getting those singles and doubles that we should have been getting.

"These cars haven't changed a whole lot in two years. I don't think you're going to see many more of those big home-run changes on suspensions and things like you used to see. We've got to tweak on what we've got."

Nonetheless, there were times last season when Ragan wondered if it was only the car and he could not prevent some self-doubt from creeping in. It was only natural.

His feeling now is that going through that has only made him stronger mentally heading into this season. It also has increased his determination to leave 2009 in his rear-view mirror and pick up instead where he left off at the end of 2008.

"It was disappointing. I would come home and I wouldn't even want to go out. I wouldn't want to talk to anybody about it," Ragan said. "It was awful -- because you got that little bit of glimpse of how good it was to finish in the top five. You got experience how good it felt to consistently run in the top five, the top 10, and to lead laps. You just thought that everything was that easy.

"Then you realize that this really is as hard as everyone says it is, and you'd better have your ducks in a row -- not only on race day but on Friday and Saturday and every day of the week. So yeah, last year was disappointing. There were a lot of long nights where I didn't want to see the morning come. But like I've said, if we can learn from those things, five years from now we'll be saying we were glad it happened."

Roush insisted that he is as certain of Ragan's driving talent now as when he first signed him in 2006.

"David is ready to be as good in this business as anybody has been," Roush said. "I've just got to get his cars right, and get the inputs that he makes coming out of the car back into the car, reflecting through engineering and preparations of the car. I'm committed to doing that in 2010."

Ragan said he is firmly committed to doing whatever it takes to get better overall results.

"Until last year, it was easy to run in the top 10, the top 15. Last year I would have given my life savings for a top-10 [finish]. That just shows you how competitive this sport is -- and if you're not on top of it, you fall behind pretty quick," Ragan said.

"So hopefully we've learned from our mistakes. We've manned up and we admitted what we did wrong -- and now we go to Daytona tied with everyone else in points, ready to do it all over again."

Related:
• Wingo named crew chief for Ragan, No. 6 team