Unadilla’s David Ragan, the only native of the Peach State in the starting field for Tuesday’s AdvoCare 500, needed to move into the top 20 in the points standings to remain in contention for a wild-card berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. But that didn’t happen as the engine blew on his No. 6 Ford on Lap 250.
“Right before I lifted to go into Turn Three, it started vibrating tremendously,” he said. “At first I thought it was the transmission or something like that because it just vibrated so bad and still had decent power, but I shut it off and I saw smoke.
“Obviously, I got back in [the garage] and half of the block is gone where a rod or something went through it, so it’s very unfortunate. We had a top-five to top-10 car today, but sometimes things happen.”
Ragan was trying to make the Chase by taking one of the wild-card spots that go to a driver not in the top 10 in points with at least one race victory and also in the top 20 in the standings. But that’s unlikely now with just one regular-season race, at Richmond on Saturday, left to run.
“We can still have a great season,” he said. “There are five or six tracks coming up where we’ll be a threat to win at, but this is going to make it a lot harder. The month of August was really tough for us.
“We had some speed in our car. We had a car that could have won the race in the right position, but you can’t do that with no engine.”
Bobby Labonte leads all active drivers with six Sprint Cup victories at Atlanta, but that winning experience didn’t help him Tuesday. Labonte spun to bring out the race’s first caution, then wrecked hard off Turn 2 on Lap 93.
“We were trying some stuff today, and it didn’t work out,” he said.
Front-row woes
Tuesday was a bad day for front-row starters Kasey Kahne and Clint Bowyer. Pole-sitter Kahne drove his No. 4 Toyota to the garage, steam spewing from the radiator overflow, just after a restart at Lap 134. The two-time Atlanta winner, who had an outside chance at grabbing one of the wild-card Chase berths, sat in the garage for 40 laps while his crew replaced the radiator which was damaged in contact with another car on a restart. He wound up 34th and essentially eliminated from Chase contention.
Bowyer, who also needed a win or a great finish to remain in play for a Chase berth, hit the wall off Turn 4 on Lap 240 after contact with Juan Pablo Montoya.
Bowyer said Montoya is a regular menace on the track.
“We’re out here racing for a spot in the Chase, and he’s racing for nothing,” Bowyer said. “I’m tired of it.”
No bonus money
The Sprint Summer Showdown offered $3 million in bonus money should one of four drivers — Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Marcos Ambrose and Paul Menard — win the AdvoCare 500. But the money, which would have been divided equally between the driver, his favorite charity and a fan chosen in a drawing, stayed in the vault.
Keselowski finished the highest of the four, in sixth place. Menard was 18th, Ambrose 21st and Busch 23rd. The drivers were part of the Showdown because they won races leading up to the AdvoCare 500.
Keselowski said his finish, while not worth $3 million, does have value.
“It’s good to come out of a race where we felt like we were off all weekend and get a sixth-place out of it,” he said. “That’s what we need to do going into the Chase, bring home cars without scratches on ’em and get solid finishes when we’re not at our best.”
Series sponsor Sprint donated $10,000 to the four charities selected by the drivers.
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