{"id":1180,"date":"2011-07-03T20:27:57","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T00:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2011-07-03T20:27:57","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T00:27:57","slug":"ragan-redeems-self-at-daytona-wins-first-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2011\/07\/03\/ragan-redeems-self-at-daytona-wins-first-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Ragan redeems self at Daytona, wins first race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/media.spokesman.com\/photos\/2011\/07\/03\/spt_3_ragan_main_t400.jpg?fd5af0684d698ce74dd4392bafb4f89a6dc66ee3\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" \/>It&#8217;s been years in the making, ever since Mark Martin left the #6 car. When would we see driver David Ragan in victory lane? After a strong sophomore season that saw him just miss the Sprint Cup Chase he&#8217;s been little more then an also ran.<\/p>\n<p>When the year started at Daytona he came with a great car. While we&#8217;ve constantly heard he &#8220;could have&#8221; or &#8220;would have&#8221; won the Daytona 500 the fact is we don&#8217;t know that for sure and what we do know for sure is that he didn&#8217;t win.<\/p>\n<p>Since that time Ragan has been a pole winner, constantly at the top of the speed charts in practice and yet still mistake prone during the events that truly matter.<\/p>\n<p>Things haven&#8217;t been helped by the fact that sponsor UPS is not signed past the end of this season. While Ragan&#8217;s contract extends pass 2011, there&#8217;s no guarantee he&#8217;ll still be in the seat of the #6 car next year.<\/p>\n<p>Ragan showed up to Daytona with two things going for him. He had a fast car and a great teammate pushing him around the track. The result was a finish that didn&#8217;t rival that of the 500 but one that saw Ragan finally find his way to victory lane.<\/p>\n<p>The win put him in contention for a &#8216;wild card&#8217; spot in the Chase. Wild card spots are awarded to the two drivers with the most wins and in the highest point positions should there be a tie. Ragan currently would join Denny Hamlin as wild card drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been years in the making, ever since Mark Martin left the #6 car. When would we see driver David Ragan in victory lane? After a strong sophomore season that saw him just miss the Sprint Cup Chase he&#8217;s been little more then an also ran. When the year started at Daytona he came with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[184],"coauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-david-ragan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}