Ragan Finishes Fifth At Gateway I nternational Raceway

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion – (finished 5th, qualified 21st) – “We didn’t have any track position the whole race. Pit stops were average, at best. We just couldn’t seem to pass any cars on pit road. Our car was pretty good. I felt like at one time, it might have been the car to beat, if we could have had good track position up front. Like Reutimann said, restarting back there in 10th was like re-starting 15th or 20th with all the lap cars. It just made it hard to battle through trying to take care of the race car. At the end of the race, I thought the car was pretty strong. It wasn’t where we needed to be; it was a good run. We would have like to have been up there battle the guys for the win but we’ll take it and move on to next week. Everyone was racing real hard. This was good Saturday night short track racing. The cars in order to drive you have to start off pretty free. Like myself, I was a little bit on the loose side at the beginning of the run. I think we were all like rookies tonight, running as hard as we can. Sometimes we just have a slip up in front of someone else. It’s nothing new, but there was a lot of traffic and it seems like it’s increased on a short track.”



TODD KLUEVER – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – (finished 11th, qualified 26th) – “It was a long night. We had a really good car. We had a better car than what we finished with, unfortunately. It’s so hard to pass here with the gear rolls and stuff, that’s the way it is. We got a little off on our pit sequence there and probably cost ourselves quite a bit of track position. If you look at how we run at flatter tracks like Milwaukee and Loudon, we come here and actually have a really decent car. I’m really proud of my guys. All in all, not a bad night, but we’ve run better.”



BOBBY EAST – No. 37 Clarence Brewer Ford Fusion – (finished 16th, qualified 5th) – “That was wild! I’m real proud of everybody on the Brewco Motorsports team. We had a good starting spot in fifth; we came in with decent track position under the green flag run there for the pit stops. We had a great pit stop and with the green flag running so long, we went a lap down and we fought really, really hard to get up there to get the Lucky Dog, but eventually we got it. We were running 11th and just outside the top-10 with 30 laps to go and I was going by a lapped car on the outside in one and I got real loose and I started to slide up the track and smacked the fence on the exit and knocked the toe out of it, real bad. So from there, we just kind of had to limp home and make sure we brought it home and ended up 16th.”


MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford Charcoal Ford Fusion – (finished 18th, qualified 14th) – “We had a decent car all weekend, but had some problems throughout the night. This is a tough track and it was hard getting a good run with all the cautions in the last part of the race. We were ok when we started, then we went two laps down after our first pit stop, we were hoping to get the laps back and even the Lucky Dog, but the long green flag didn’t give us the opportunity. It was hard to get the lap back. We struggled throughout the race, but hopefully we can get the car in good running condition for next week’s race at Indy.”


KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox/American Red Cross Ford Fusion – (finished 24th, qualified 9th) – “We had break problems all night with the break pedal through the whole run. We could have gotten a top run there near the finish. We struggled to get back up, and then got back on the lead lap and in the top-10. Then two cars got together and I tried to take the top line and check-up, then kind of got run over. I’m proud of the crew; they did a great job.”

JASON KELLER – No. 27 Huggies Ford Fusion – (finished 30th, qualified 4th) – “I guess it was one of those deals when some cars can and some cars can’t. It kind of got jumbled-up there. The car spun in front of me and I was committed to running low and somebody got in the back of me. It was one of those chain reaction deals. It’s a bummer. We were a solid top-10 race car and it actually got better as the race went on. I take this personally, I wish I could have gone up the middle, but I couldn’t in this case. The 42 (Kevin Hamilin) spun in front of me and I checked up and the next thing I knew, I was turned around.”


RICHARD JOHNS – No. 25 FreeCreditReport.com Ford Fusion – (finished 31st, qualified 42nd) – “This is a place where you hit the breaks so hard in the corners, in turn one anyways, and I got wheel hop. It unloads the rear end so much. It wasn’t that I was driving in the corner too much, but I was driving in hard and use as much breaks as possible to keep in on the bottom of the race track, and the rear end just unloads. The wheels are still spinning but there is no load on it, so it starts the wheel hop. And that’s what it did; it just hopped away from underneath me. There was no way I could save it. It did the same thing in qualifying, but I didn’t know what it was in qualifying and I figured it out when I wrecked in tonight in the race.”



KYLE KRISILOFF – No. 14 Lilly/Walgreens Ford Fusion – (finished 36th, qualified 18th) – “We had some break problems and we were loose all day. We were a couple of laps down and we went in there and couple of cars got together and Mike (Bliss) came across the track. I don’t think I had anywhere to go. I didn’t see a hole and I hit him pretty hard. It’s terrible for me; it’s terrible for him (Bliss). We had a car that we were pretty excited about this week, we were hoping we could take it with us next week. It’s sad that I can’t take it there. Maybe I can get another one and we’ll be there next week.”