David Ragan, the driver of the #34 Ford at Front Row Motorsports, has been selected to drive the #18 Toyota of Joe Gibbs Racing as a substitute for the injured Kyle Busch. Busch, who was flown from Daytona Beach back to the Charlotte, North Carolina area on Tuesday, will miss several more weeks of competition with a compound leg fracture and a foot fracture from his crash during Saturday's Xfinity Series race. Busch's substitute for the Daytona 500 was Truck Series driver Matt Crafton, who got to make his Cup debut in NASCAR's biggest race.
This is an unusual arrangement for NASCAR. Ragan already has a full-time ride at Front Row, having driven the #34 machine since 2012, and even giving the team its first win at Talladega in May of 2013. NASCAR substitute drivers are usually picked because they do not have a full-time ride and thus do not have prior commitments to other teams. Furthermore, Ragan has been a Ford driver his entire Cup career, while all Joe Gibbs and JGR-affiliated vehicles in every NASCAR national series are Toyotas. Crafton was likely selected to drive in the Daytona 500 because his truck team, ThorSport Racing, also fields Toyotas, resulting in no conflict between manufacturers. However, fans and crew members are optimistic that Ragan, who struggled through much of 2014, will have better results with his return to a true top NASCAR team, as his old team Roush Fenway Racing is, and that his abandonment of a full-time ride to make a substitution and doing so with a different manufacturer should not matter.
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