Early in Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was running near the front of the field.
Though the car didn’t finish as high as driver David Ragan would have liked, he gets high marks for his 18th-place finish in his first run as a substitute for injured Kyle Busch.
“I was really thrilled,” said Ragan, who brought the car home without incident. “The first 100 laps of the race, our M&M’s Crispy Camry was fast, had speed,” Ragan said. “Track position means a lot at any race, and as we fell back a little bit, I think it was a snowball effect. We just really probably were a little behind on our adjustments, and that’s probably just my inexperience with these guys (on the team) and being a little timid on making a few adjustments.
“As the track rubbered up at the halfway mark of the race, we were just way too loose, so we had to take some pretty big swings to get back, but I was happy at the end of the race. We had some good speed, but we had lost too much ground. All in all, a good weekend. We learned a lot, brought the car back in one piece, but we can run better than that. I felt like we had a good, solid top-10 car and things just didn’t shake out.”
Source: Reid Spencer / NASCAR Wire Service
