With the green-white-checkered finish to Sunday’s Daytona 500 looming, David Ragan thought he had it covered.
The Roush Fenway Racing driver was set to lead the field to the green flag at Daytona International Speedway on the restart with Wood Brothers Racing’s Trevor Bayne on his bumper. Instead he found himself penalized for an improper restart after he crossed into the inside lane before the start-finish line, which is a NASCAR rules violation.
“I know what the rules are,” Ragan said. “I felt like the leader had the start of the race. I felt like we fired and I started to move down right before the start-finish line, but I don’t think I crossed that invisible line that separates the top and the bottom.
“I also haven’t seen the replay, but to win these Cup races, you can’t make any mistakes and the mistake I made hurt us, but our UPS team did a great job. … It’ll take us a long time to forget this one, but we’ll move on to Phoenix and the sooner we can win one, the sooner we can forget it.”
Ragan went on to acknowledge that he “was just a little bit too greedy.”
Ragan has been under fire for finishing 24th and 27th in the Cup standings the past two seasons. Whether or not he felt the pressure of that Sunday, Ragan will be left to wonder what might have been.
“If I would have waited an extra split second to start moving down … but I felt like we crossed the plane of the start-finish line, that I wasn’t totally on the bottom. I felt like you could start moving over before. But you live and learn.
Still, while it was tough to watch it slip away, he was proud of Bayne for winning the race. At Daytona it takes two cars working in tandem to move through the pack and take the lead. On Sunday he worked closely with Ragan throughout the race and was in position to win because of their work together.
“That’s a tough one to get away, but congrats to Trevor. He did an awesome job. If it wasn’t for the 21 (of Bayne pushing him to the front), we wouldn’t have been up there, so Trevor did a great job.”
