David Ragan earned his first NASCAR victory by passing Ryan Newman right before the finish line in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Ragan won for the first time in 196 starts — 85 in Nationwide — spanning all three of NASCAR’s top series. Houston Chronicle
Newman started from the pole and led the field on a final restart for a two-lap sprint to the finish. He had his hands full with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who followed him bumper-to-bumper as he looked for a chance to pass.
But Newman and Earnhardt made contact as Earnhardt tried to dart around him on the final lap. Ragan then squeezed by Newman for the win. The Associated Press
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“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Ragan said. “I didn’t know if it would come this weekend or not. A lot of fun. A lot of emotions. We’ve got 500 miles to do it again tomorrow.”
Earnhardt, who was shuffled back to fifth, waited for Ragan on pit road to congratulate him on the win.
Newman finished second, Logano was third. Tony Raines and Earnhardt rounded out the top five.
“It’s cool to get David that win,” Logano said. “He’s been trying for a while now.” Dailypress
“It was wild, believe me, it was a lot of fun,” Logano said after his first start at Talladega. “To help David get his first victory, we’ve been friends for ever, running Legends cars back in Georgia. To push him to his first Nationwide win was pretty cool.”
Jason Leffler, Jason Keller, Scott Lagasse Jr., Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch completed the top-10. Busch led the most laps with 31 in a race that featured 34 lead changes among 15 drivers.
There were no major pileups, but a few incidents made for another exciting and wild race at Talladega.
Michael Waltrip was bumped by Logano on lap 54, with Waltrip running into Clint Bowyer. The two drivers slammed into the inside wall on the backstretch.
Matt Kenseth had a horrifying wreck on the backstretch with 13 laps remaining. Kenseth, who was running second at the time, got tapped from behind by his teammate Ragan. He spun and then flipped his No.16 Ford several times before the car rested on its hood just before turn three. Kenseth quickly exited his car and was not injured.
“I felt David hit me and then the car just spun out,” Kenseth said. “I was just hanging on and hoping I would end right side up.” Kansas City Star
Earnhardt made a big blunder early when he missed his pit box on the first pit stop of the race. He didn’t quite fall a lap down, but dropped a long way back from the leaders.
Earnhardt, who was running his fourth Nationwide race this season, also missed a pit box at the Daytona 500, the first of many pit-road mistakes this year.
“I didn’t even know where my pit stall was when I got on pit road,” he said. “There were a couple of cars in front of me and I never saw it.” NASCAR.com
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