CONCORD David Ragan was about to win the Daytona 500. He was leading on the restart and he wanted to remain there during the final laps. To slip in front of drafting partner Trevor Bayne, he dropped from the track's high line to the low line.

The move - going below the yellow line - clearly violated NASCAR rules. But it's a violation NASCAR invokes as frequently as the NBA invokes traveling. Yet NASCAR waved its black flag, Ragan retreated to 15th place and his opportunity to win the year's biggest race was crushed. Ragan showed his displeasure by slapping the steering wheel of his Ford Fusion.

Here's a driver who is 25, has been racing fulltime in NASCAR's top series since 2007 and, despite his 90-year-old grandmother praying for him back in Henderson, Ga., had yet to win.

Jack Roush, CEO of Roush Fenway Motorsports, the team for which Ragan drives, calls the loss "horrifying" and "devastating." He adds: "There was pressure from the team, the sponsors, fans and family, and he let it slip away."

But Ragan didn't scream at NASCAR for enforcing the rule, didn't scream at his crew because he needed somebody to blame and didn't scream at the world because everybody saw the mistake.

"David is like nobody I have ever met," says his long-time girlfriend Jacquelyn Butler. "He's a 40-year-old man in a 25-year-old's body."

Says Ragan: "I think losing your mind and cursing out the pit crew, that's all show. That doesn't do anything for me. I try to stay level-headed and that's just the way you're brought up. That's the way you're disciplined as a kid.

"Kyle Busch wasn't disciplined as a kid. He's the best driver on the track right now, in my opinion, and he goes off sometimes and he has to apologize later. That's the way he is or Tony Stewart or (Juan Pablo) Montoya. It doesn't mean I have less desire because I don't have a cow if something crazy happens.

"I try to keep everything in perspective. Sometimes people look and say, 'That's your weak point,' and 'You don't show enough emotion.' I'll argue that."

No frenzy for Ragan

When Ragan returned to Daytona recently and won the Coke Zero 400 his postrace interviews were devoid of the expected I finally won frenzy. Interviewers tried to get him to jump and shout. They failed.

"The way we grew up we were raised not to show a lot of emotion," says Brett Ragan. He and David "don't say, 'I love you' to each other."

Brett is David's cousin. They grew up in Unadilla, Ga., a town 45 miles south of Macon without a stoplight, police or McDonald's.

Brett, a set-up mechanic for Roush teammate Carl Edwards, bought a 2,500-square foot house with David Ragan in a subdivision in Huntersville. They cut their own grass and do their own cleaning.

"Especially when our parents come to visit," says Brett.

David Ragan, who will start 26th today in the Lenox Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, would be in the Chase if the Chase began today.

And this would be good.

We need athletes to cheer, and we often choose athletes who remind us of who we are, or who we think we are.

"When I met David, he was driving trucks part-time," Jacquelyn Butler says. "If he changed after he started driving Cup cars, his dad (former Cup driver Ken Ragan) would be upset, and I'd smack him. But he's the same guy."

A humble existence

If I had Ragan's money I, too, would live as humbly as I could except for the house on the lake and the Porsche in the driveway.

"I absolutely hate my house," says Ragan.

The road that connects him to the rest of the United States is torn up, and getting to Interstate 77 is like getting to Kentucky Speedway.

"If I could do it over, I would build a shop and put a 1,000-square foot living quarter above it and live there until I get married," says Ragan. "I don't have a TV in my room. I wash clothes and sleep there. We might have 10 things in the pantry and water and Cokes in the fridge and we eat out every meal."

As if to prove it, Ragan consumes one of the two spinach feta cheese wraps with eggs he bought at Starbucks a few hours earlier.

To play back a tape of a more than two hour interview is to hear chewing.

Where do you keep your plane?

"I don't have a plane," Ragan says. "I can catch rides with Jack (Roush) on the team planes, and all my teammates have their own planes. They can get home faster than I can."

Humpy Wheeler, the former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, is a friend of David's father. Wheeler told Ken Ragan that David needed to put some meat on his bones. So Wheeler talked David into buying a bike. When David finished pedaling, Wheeler talked him into putting on headgear and 18-ounce gloves. They'd box 30-minute rounds. Ragan would come home with his nose bloody, his arms numb and his mom, Beverly, wondering why her husband said so many nice things about Wheeler.

"There's no doubt in my mind that David would make it as a pro boxer given enough amateur bouts and good coaching," says Wheeler.

Ragan is 6-foot and 150 pounds, somewhere between skinny and lean. Always an athlete, he played high school football (quarterback and cornerback), baseball (catcher) and basketball (point guard). After 10th grade, he stopped to focus on racing.

Beverly had watched Ken race 8 years in a Cup car and worried. So Ken offered a deal to his 15-year-old son: Give up racing, and on your next birthday, you can have a brand new Corvette.

The decision was easy.

A country boy

"David is good for the sport," says Wheeler. "Racing just needs to let people know who he is. The place where he is from in Georgia is classic NASCAR 1949. The people go to dirt tracks in Cordele. Drive Ford F-150 pickups with shotguns in the back window. Guys sit around eating boiled peanuts whole, hull and all. Old stores with rusty screen doors, oiled floors, rounds of cheese and Brown Mule Chewing Tobacco. People still blame communists for metric bolts.

"How can anyone brought up in this environment be anything but humble, God-fearing and a person who still says, 'Yes sir' and No sir?' That is David."

The small-town courtesies are not a surprise. The humility is not a surprise. The absence of a plane is not a surprise.

The four fainting goats and two miniature donkeys are a surprise. Get out of the car at Ragan's 15-acre Concord shop and there they are.

"See, I was driving and I saw a sign: Fainting Goats for Sale," says Ragan. "And I said, 'How much for four? $110?' Just something different. They're good for conversation."

"I don't think any of the other drivers have them," Brett Ragan says.

Ragan and Brett live a mile from Lake Norman. Brett estimates they've been on the lake at most four times in the seven years they've owned the house.

David Ragan is more likely to wash the miniature donkeys and feed the goats. The goats are called fainting goats because, when startled, they freeze for 10 seconds, and usually fall over.

When Kyle Busch has a confrontation with another driver, even he hasn't tried this.

"I don't know about living with David," says Roush. "He'd drive a woman crazy with those goats and donkeys. He buys them because they're cheaper than horses."

Butler, Ragan's girlfriend, loves animals as much as he does. A UNC Charlotte graduate who works as a veterinary technician, she's 23. And she's not as patient as her boyfriend.

"She's starting to put the heat on me," says Ragan. "I'm holding off as long as I can."

Is it true you're pushing him to get married?

"I mean, we've dated five years," says Butler. "What do you expect?"

And always, cars

Outside Ragan's shop is a 1931 Model A Ford so perfect it looks as if it just rolled in from the spa.

Inside the shop, on the floor, is the trophy he won at Daytona. Next to it is the Sunoco flag he borrowed for his victory lap.

There's a bee's nest from his grandmother's house. To preserve the nest Ragan covered it with hairspray.

In the garage is a beautiful red 1985 Ford fire truck, formerly a member in good standing of the Rushville, N.Y., fire department.

"I was on eBay one night - I buy a lot of stuff on eBay," says Ragan. "I like deals because I'm cheap. I saw this thing for $4,000 bucks or something. It has 14,000 miles on it and runs great. Fire trucks are kept indoors, they're taken care of and no one wants them. We don't have use for it other than washing the parking lot once a year and putting in weed killer and spraying the gravel."

You ever use it to pick up a date?

"I would," he says. "I would do something like that."

Near the fire truck is a 1938 Ford package UPS delivery truck that ran a route in Chicago; a 1948 Willys Jeep Ragan drove as a kid on the family farm; an old race car like the one his grandfather drove during the 1940s.

Ragan has a second shop. An elderly neighbor lets Ragan use her old garage a few miles down the road in Kannapolis as long as he keeps it up and cuts her grass. Outside, there are gunshot blasts, presumably from a nearby range.

Inside, beneath a blanket, is a Spitfire yellow 1966 Corvette convertible so stunning you want to drop to one knee, bow your head and repent even if you didn't do anything wrong.

The car was in terrible shape when Ken Ragan bought it after he stopped racing, and he lovingly coaxed it back to life. He sold it for $40,000, with half the money going for racing and the other half into a CD for David's college education.

The Corvette was sold a second time before David bought it back for about $75,000. He gave it to his father.

Next to the 'Vette is a blue half-ton three-on-the-tree 1964 Chevrolet truck in which deliveries were made for Ken's auto parts store.

Many of the cars outside the shop aren't Ragan's. Just as some people attract injured pets, he attracts injured cars. Friends who need a place to park them know he will say yes.

A respect for history

Between the Corvette and the truck is a big cardboard Dale Earnhardt cutout Ragan bought at a yard sale even though, growing up, he was not an Earnhardt fan.

"A house or garage around here isn't complete without some kind of Dale Earnhardt material," says Ragan. "Everybody has an Earnhardt story. Everybody is a cousin or in-law or went to church with him.

"I've learned to respect him a lot. I know more of the story than what's on the outside."

Near Earnhardt is a plastic box, and inside the box are racing cards. You know the cards; you see them outside the hauler at the track. The driver puts on shades and crosses his arms and poses as coolly as he can. Adam Ragan, a year and half older than brother David, looks cool on his racing card.

Adam has Down syndrome. He is a member of the David Ragan Fan Club in every way; his number is 001. Unless he's going to church, he wears a David Ragan shirt, a Roush Fenway shirt or a wrestling shirt. Adam loves pro wrestling.

"Ric Flair," he says, when I ask his favorite.

"Ric got him tickets to Wrestlemania in Charlotte," says Ragan. "How fun would it have been to live in Ric's shoes four or five years?"

Ken Ragan, 60, says that when David was growing up, activities such as riding a bike or dribbling a basketball came easily to him.

"He saw how hard Adam had to work," says Ken. "And he saw that even though Adam was frustrated, he didn't complain. He kept trying."

Adam wanted the cards printed, and loves to pass them out at the track.

"He's accepted," says David. "He likes people and hanging out and stuff like that. He has to struggle everyday just living his life. Even a little thing like making dinner. It teaches you in more ways than others that you're fortunate."

As Ken and Beverly age, there will come a time when David expects Adam to live with him.

They'll have no shortage of vehicles. Ragan figures he owns 20.

"The things I buy, if things get tight, they'll still hold value and I can sell them," says Ragan.

Potential champion?

In Ragan's world, cars take precedence over clubs. Brett comes over after work and they get dirty. Chris Dilbeck, another Georgia buddy and racer, who runs the garage, joins them. Vehicles are taken apart and put together, and except for the Model A, which has a CD player, the vehicles are what they were. But cooler.

The most important of them is the UPS Ford over at Roush's shop. The contract with UPS will expire after this season, and has yet to be renewed.

Roush sounds confident.

"There's no glass ceiling," he says. "David is ready to be a factor" - in the championship - "right now."

Is he good enough to win one?

"I think I've got the talent," Ragan says as we stand in the Corvette's glow. "I've got the demeanor. I respect guys that are the best in the sport. Jimmie Johnson. Jeff Gordon is still good. Carl Edwards. On a given day, I can beat them. I have.

"That is what motivates me to keep going. Now, can I do it consistently? I have to get more consistent."

We get into a 1960 Ford Fairlane police car. The car, formerly a member in good standing of the Topeka, Kan., police department, was green when Ragan bought it.

He and the fellows took out the engine, pulled off the chrome, painted it black and white and joined Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club so they could get copies of the Mayberry police decal and stick them on the doors. In the show the car usually was a Galaxie, but the Fairlane made a few guest appearances.

The 292 Thunderbird engine cranks up immediately.

"I have an appreciation for American-made ingenuity," says Ragan. "It's kind of a shame we're getting away from that. I hope someday my kids will understand how great a country we live in and how far we've come since World War II. The auto was one of things that made our country stand out."

The country boy drives the Fairlane down a country road. There's no traffic. There's also no air conditioning. The Topeka police officers didn't have it, so why should we?

He taps a button on the left side of the floor with his foot, and the siren begins to sing.

You want to track down some evildoers?

"I'm ready to go," Ragan calmly says.