David Ragan (High Sierra Photo)

David Ragan brought the No. 6 Scotts Ford F-150 home sixth in Saturday's O'Reilly 250 at Kansas Speedway, recording his career-best NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series finish. Ragan worked his way from the back after a late-race pit stop to get his second top 10 finish of 2006.

Ragan started the race in the third position, marking his best qualifying effort of his brief Craftsman Truck Series career. The No. 14 of Rick Crawford missed a shift on the initial start of the race, stacking up the field behind him. As the top-10 trucks scattered to avoid making contact with Crawford, Ragan fell back to the fifth position. The Scotts Ford would work its way back to the third position on lap 25, with Ragan reporting that the truck was "a little snug, but it gets worse behind someone."

The first caution of the event would come at lap 30 when the No. 12 of Joey Miller spun on the backstretch. The No. 6 would come to pit road to take four tires, fuel and a chassis adjustment. A good stop by the Scotts crew would send Ragan back to the track in the fourth position for the restart on lap 35. Ragan would move up to the fourth position before the caution flag would fly again at lap 40 for an incident with the No. 13 truck.

Ragan restarted in the fourth position at lap 45, and would continue to run in the top five for the next long green flag run. The No. 40 and 46 trucks got together on lap 78 bringing out the third caution of the race, sending the No. 6 Ford to pit road again for adjustments. Ragan returned to the track with four tires, fuel and another chassis adjustment to help the No. 6 continue making its forward progress.

Ragan would return to the track in the fifth spot, and continue to hold position until lap 108, when the No. 02 truck of Kelly Sutton made hard contact with the inside wall bringing out the red flag. The race was stopped for nearly 10 minutes while safety workers extracted Sutton from her truck, giving the Scotts crew ample time to plan a strategy to get them to the finish.

Ragan came to pit road with the rest of the lead lap trucks for four tires and fuel, and would restart the race in the fourth spot. He would take advantage of another quick caution period on lap 126 to make his final stop of the race, again taking tires, fuel and a chassis adjustment. Ragan would restart the race in the 20th position, but quickly moved through the field.
"It's super tight," reported Ragan to his crew. "I'll hang onto it and see what we can get."

Ragan did just that, bringing the No. 6 Scotts Ford F-150 to the checkered flag in the sixth position. It was his second top-10 run in his last three starts in the No. 6.

"The Scotts Miracle-Gro Ford F-150 was awesome all day. It was a little tight in traffic, but when we got out on our own it was really a rocket ship. (Crew chief) Mike Beam and the guys made another great call. We came in and took tires with 20-some laps to go and we felt like that would help us get back to the front, but obviously track position was a little more important. We learned a little bit and brought the truck home in one piece, and it was a pretty good points day for us in the owner standings. We've had some fast trucks and it's just cool to get out there and race with those guys. Todd (Bodine) and Mike Skinner and David Reutimann, some of those guys are awesome to race with, so I had a good time and built up some more confidence. I look forward to going to Kentucky."