David Ragan reflects on beating out Jimmie Johnson during Daytona 500 qualifying

During Wednesday night’s qualifying session for the Daytona 500, David Ragan beat out Jimmie Johnson to lock into Sunday’s race. Back when these two were both full-time, it was the Jimmie Show in NASCAR. Ragan is getting a little get-back in this latest battle.

Driving the Stage 60 car for RFK Racing, Ragan knew he’d have a car capable of making the race. However, you never know until you do it. Throw in the fact that Anthony Alfredo had an absolute blister of a lap for an open car and the margin of error was very narrow.

Before we knew it, David Ragan was sweating it out as Jimmie Johnson made his pass on the track. Toyota as a whole didn’t perform well in qualifying, as they have lacked in the past several years on this night at Daytona.

After locking himself into the Daytona 500, Ragan talked about watching Seven-Time make his way around the superspeedway.

“Well, initially I thought, Man, we’re cutting this way too close,” Ragan said to the media after qualifying. “I felt like we’d have a really fast race car, and we do. I really wasn’t expecting that lap from Anthony. That was a great lap for him and that team. Congratulations to those guys.

“I didn’t have a chance to beat Jimmie Johnson too often in my career when he and I were running week in, week out. I’ll take the small victories when I can.

“That just shows you how close the competition is. All these teams work hard on all the details. Every 10th, half of a 10th mean something. To be able to get locked in on pole night is really special. We’ve still got a lot of work in front of us to have some speed to go contend for a win.”