CHARLOTTE, N.C. — David Ragan will participate in his 16th Daytona 500 at Daytona Int’l Speedway next week, driving for Rick Ware Racing.
Ragan retired from full-time NASCAR racing after the 2019 season, but he’s continued to compete in select events and work as a test driver for Ford Performance.
“When I retired from full-time racing a couple of years ago, I really wasn’t tired of the driving part,” Ragan told the media Wednesday. “That was the fun part and kind of the easy part on the course of the weekends, but I was just tired of the travel and the commitments from the sponsors and the manufacturers and, really, the grind of the schedule.”
Ragan explained how the opportunity with Rick Ware Racing came about.
“We had a partner with Select Blinds that has been a partner of ours for the last couple of years, so that makes it a lot easier to do when you have a sponsor that you already have a relationship with,” Ragan said, “and then with my relationship with Ford it needed to be in a Ford Mustang and Rick Ware Racing had that open car that was locked in that had a charter that he was gonna rotate some drivers throughout the year, so it was really just a perfect set of circumstances that allowed me to scratch the itch of going back to the race track again.”
The Next Gen car will not be anything new for Ragan.
“As far as driving the Next Gen car, I feel like I’ve gotten to make as many laps as anyone over the last year-and–a-half,” Ragan said. “I’ve done all of the testing for Ford in their wheel force transducer car, so we got to run a lot of different race tracks last year, helping the teams develop some of the models that they’re using for their simulation, so I’ve got to run a lot of laps.
“That doesn’t always feel the same as a race situation and that’s another reason why I wanted to enter into a couple of races this year just to give me some experience actually racing the car,” Ragan said. “I feel like that will allow me to give better feedback to all the Ford engineers this year as we continue to develop the Ford Mustang.”
Ragan is impressed by the Next Gen car.
“I love the look of the Next Gen car. That’s the first thing that stands out to me,” he said. “When you walk into the garage and you see the bigger wheels just makes the car look more uniform. The character lines on the nose and the tail. You can look at a Ford Mustang and you know that it’s a Ford Mustang without even looking at the decals or the paint scheme, so I think that’s important to have that brand identity from a manufacturer’s perspective.
“I love the five-speed sequential gearbox,” he added. “I think that will make restarts more exciting. Road course racing, the drivers will be able to be a lot more aggressive and have more options in their gear ratio selection, so I think you’ll see an increase in speed, maybe an increase in overtaking on restarts — things like that. The brake package is a lot better. The larger wheels allow the brake rotors and brake calipers to be bigger, so you can drive the car a lot harder into the corners.”
The two-time Cup Series race winner has no aspirations of returning to full-time racing.
“Most of the time when I’m sitting at home and watching the race, I don’t feel like I’m left out or have a fear of missing out,” he said. “There are a few occasions that the race starts at one of my favorite tracks — the Southern 500, the Night Race at Bristol — even watching the cars roll out into the Coliseum for the first time, I do have some jealousy like, ‘Man, I wish I was in one of those cars. I wish I could be there.’
“It will be special to be at the Daytona 500,” he added. “That’s great, but when they get out to California and Las Vegas, I’m gonna be extremely happy to be sitting at my house in North Carolina.”