Bayne survives the Monster with a top-10 finish

For the second time in the last three weeks, Trevor Bayne scored a top-10 finish in the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion, this time at Dover International Speedway.  Bayne survived a late race crash caused when Jimmie Johnson had transmission issues and took out nearly 20 cars in the field and battled late in the race with Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr., for spots inside the top-ten.

Trevor Bayne, driver of the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford, leads a pack
during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AAA 400 Drive for
Austism At Dover International Speedway on May 15, 2016
Credit:  Sean Gardner

Bayne struggled early in the AAA 400 with no grip where the rubber was building on the track.  On the first pit stop of the race, Matt Puccia went with four tires and a tire adjustment on the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion when the competition caution fell at lap 40.  As the long run went on, Bayne told crew chief Matt Puccia that his right rear tire was going away in a hurry.  Leader Kevin Harvick put Bayne one lap down while running in 26th at the lap 116 marker, a lap later the caution flag fell on lap 144 for the No. 7's single car crash.

With several caution flags during a stretch during the race it gave the team some time to adjust on the car but at lap 214 when Reed Sorenson had an accident Bayne told Puccia all of their adjustments seemed to keep making their car tighter through the middle of the corner.

Puccia made several adjustments to make the car better through the next few runs, as he was running in 19th when the big wreck occurred on lap 356.  Bayne took on some damage to his quarter panel and the team debated on fixing the damage.

Spotter Roman Pemberton talked crew chief Matt Puccia into coming in and fixing it, rather than losing the positions on the track, he felt the team would be better off to fix the damage in the pits, lose a few spots in the pits and gain the positions back on the track.  Bayne was able to race his way up to 8th place but the tight handling of his car forced him back to 10th place late in the event where he would finish.

"Sometimes we haven't felt like this season we got the finish we deserved and today we get didn't a finish we deserve we will take it," Trevor Bayne said after the AAA 400.  "The shoe was on the right foot today.  It is nice to get a finish like that after not having a great weekend.  We were really tight all day.  That last run we were pretty fast at the end of it.  We will learn from it, come back next time and count our blessings here and take a top-10 happily.  I was on the edge of my seat out there for sure.  It is a really grueling race track.  You can't let your guard down for a second or it will bite you.  We that in practice and saw that in the race.  I am just glad to get out of here without any wounds."

Scott's Pit Box: Why a little $2.50 part is such a big deal in the pits

So the big discussion as of late has been lug nuts.  There has been a sense of change in the pits in the last year when NASCAR made changes to the rule book and left it up to the teams to decide whether or not to put all five lugs on the wheel.  Two weeks ago NASCAR went back and decided to change it where teams must have all five on the car but it seems there is still a gray area teams are working around.

Teams glue lug nuts to the wheel before each pit stop using a Contact Adhesive from either 3M or Loctite .  So the lugs are on the wheel already when the tire carrier slaps them up for the tire changer to hit them with the gun.  The little gray area it seems is teams might be using an unthreaded lug nut on the fifth stud and skipping it.  On NASCAR America last night there was a clear shot of the No. 20 crew hitting 4 of the lugs and jumping over the fifth.  So they have to be using something like an unthreaded nut so it goes straight over the stud bolt.

Safety is the biggest concern with the cars.  If you don't get the lugs tightened up on the wheel there is a chance of an accident happening on pit road.  Also there is another problem that can happen as it did with the 78 team on Saturday night.  Over tightening the lugs can result in a bad vibration and breaking a stud off.  NASCAR has been checking each team after the end of the last two events and so far no team has had a problem having all their lugs tightened at the end of the race.

On April 25, 2016 each team received a memo from NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Managing Director Richard Buck stating that effective immediately, updates to the rule book would be made to reinforce expectations THAT ALL FIVE LUG NUTS be installed in a safe and secure manner throughout all national series events.

Kansas Speedway has a special spot for Bayne, Roush

It was getting down to the final stretch of the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series season and rumors

began to swirl about Michael Waltrip Racing letting go of Trevor Bayne because of sponsor OUT! Pet Care not being able to fulfill their end of the bargain.  It was at the end of 2009, that Bayne had signed a three year deal to be part of Waltrip's team that was suppose to include two full-seasons of Nationwide competition.

Bayne had just finished 6th at Dover with the No. 99 team, and found out he'd be let go that weekend by MWR.  Jack Roush made the call to Bayne to put him in one of his cars, even going out to start a new team up with the No. 17 unsponsored Ford Mustang for Kansas Speedway.  The organization wasted little time getting him to the track putting him in a fifth car.

While Bayne's result wasn't that great on that October day, it started a partnership up between a driver and team that has lasted since October 2010.  When Bayne was let go by MWR, many questioned them and how things could possibly happen that way when a young driver was performing up the way Bayne was, but sponsorship has proven over the last few years to be the biggest issue in this sport and while it took Trevor Bayne a few years to find the right package with AdvoCare on his hood to make it to full-time in the Sprint Cup Series.  That first start with Roush Fenway Racing at Kansas Speedway can be remembered as the start of everything for him.

Waltrip's organization has since gone under due to finance issues, and Roush has made a sudden gain on the track this season.  The driver that replaced Bayne at MWR, Ryan Truex never had a successful career in either Sprint Cup or Xfinity.  So was MWR's move a blessing for Bayne or a karma on themselves.

Good Cars, Good Crew Chief have Bayne back in the game

Trevor Bayne walks through the garage a little
more confident these days

Trevor Bayne walks through the garage area, a smile on his face, a little more perk in his step these days and there is a good reason why.  In the last few weeks things have really began to come together on the track for Bayne and the results are beginning to show with two top-ten results and a top-five in the last four races, along with leading more laps than he ever had before in his career.

In the off-season Roush Fenway Racing made some major personnel changes to its organization and also mixed up its lineup with the crew chiefs.  After a struggling season with crew chief Bob Osborne in 2015, RFR put Osborne with Chris Buescher at Front Row Motorsports and slid Matt Puccia in as the crew chief of the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion with Bayne.  Throw in the fact that since 2012, Bayne had been missing something else as well, and the results have began to get better each weekend:  GOOD CARS.

"It is so refreshing to come to the race track and have a chance," Bayne said after finishing 10th Sunday.  "I feel really good about the pieces they are giving me.  It is all about the race cars.  I'm surely proud of this team."

Bayne's confidence has been at an all-time high as of late.  He has been able to keep himself on the lead lap, out of trouble and been able to contend for good finishes on all kinds of tracks this season and as crew chief Matt Puccia said on Sunday the team has to keep pressing forward.

"The car was really strong, but this place is all about patience," Puccia said.  "Even though you have a fast car, you can't do it by yourself.  You step out of line and get yourself in trouble real fast.  He did a really good job staying patient, staying in line.  It just didn't work out for us.

"But people have been talking about us all year long.  We've had speed everywhere we've gone.  That's what we've got to carry on.  We've to keep progressing and moving the needle.  That's what we're doing every week, and it's starting to show.  It's a morale booster seeing how we ran today."

Earlier in the week Bayne did a podcast and stated that one of the key factors was he was getting much better race cars since the beginning of the season.  Something he said he hadn't had since about the 2011 season. You can't have good results with cars that are handling terribly every weekend and you are seeing the signs of that each week as this team is getting better and better.

Who thought at the beginning of the season we'd be disappointed with 10th?

I made a statement back in 2014 when Carl Edwards left to go to Joe Gibbs Racing, that Roush Fenway Racing was going to find it's way back to success with Trevor Bayne.  There have been a lot of struggling moments along the way, the hard times, wrecked race cars and dealing with fans bashing Trevor Bayne have gotten old over the past year and a half.  But who would have thought when this season started that we fans would be disappointed in Trevor Bayne finishing 10th at Talladega?

Trevor Bayne leads the field at Talladega Credit: Getty Images

I have seen fans come and go and run their jaws that this young man just wasn't good enough to compete in the Sprint Cup Series.  On Sunday, Bayne did everything right.  He followed every instruction from spotter Roman Pemberton and crew chief Matt Puccia and he stayed in the bottom line of the field to try and get a run to the front.  Bayne's No. 6 AdvoCare Ford just couldn't get a push from anyone to get around the front two cars and slipped back in the draft from the lack of help.

By far the race at Talladega was Trevor Bayne and his team's strongest performance to date from the start to finish.  Had they had the right drafting help at the end, who knows where they might have ended up finishing at.  So that leaves me with the disappointment.  Like I stated before, who would have thought back in February when everyone was debating about how Roush Fenway Racing was going to perform this season that we as fans would have had such disappointment from a 10th place finish.  Yet the reason why is, Trevor Bayne deserved a better result and his car was much better than a 10th place car.

"We had a really good race car when we had help but everybody left the bottom on that last restart

Trevor Bayne talks with Tony Stewart on pit road Sunday

and when they all went to the top I might as well just be driving out the rear view mirror trying to get run over," Bayne stated.  "We pushed the 41 to a really good start, I think he might have cleared the 2 and I had help from the 21 but I think the damage on the 21 deterred some help."

"They all went to to the top, and we ended up 10th.  I thought we had a great race car.  I'm really proud of what my guys brought to the track this weekend but we finished 10th.

Bayne during an interview talked about the key issue that has helped turn things around as of late at Roush Fenway Racing.  The cars are better.

"It is so refreshing to come to the race track and have a change.  I feel really good about the pieces they are giving me.  It is all about the race cars.  You can't drive any harder, they just are giving me better race cars.  I am proud of my guys.  We had a pretty event free day other than the pit road penalty but we recovered from that for the most part."

After his 10th place finish, Trevor Bayne moved to 16th in the Chase Grid for the series standings.

Kale Uphoff returns to tire changing duties

It was the end of last October after the race in Kansas when Kale Uphoff had to take time off to have partial hip replacement surgery and that the veteran Roush Fenway tire changer would be out for quite a while.  Last week, pittalks.com reported that Jon Moore would be out with an injury on the No. 17 Fastenal crew and No. 6 AdvoCare rear tire changer would be moving to the No. 17 team but there was no report on who would be taking his place on the AdvoCare team.

Last night I found out Corey Demarco who replaced Kale Uphoff last season will be moving to the rear tire changer position and Uphoff would be taking on the front tire changing responsibilities according to Pit Crew instructor Andy Ward on twitter.  This afternoon, Kale himself confirmed he was back with the No. 6 AdvoCare Racing team after his injuries last season.  Kale Uphoff confirms he is back!

Now the AdvoCare Crew consists of:

Front Tire Changer:  Kale Uphoff
Front Tire Carrier:  Alan Troutman
Jackman:  Richie Williams
Rear Tire Changer:  Corey Demarco
Rear Tire Carrier:  Bradley Sutton
Gas Man:  Josh Pech
Crew Chief:  Matt Puccia

A Five Year streak that needed to end

So let's get something straight. Trevor Bayne went five years without scoring a top-five finish since his win in the Daytona 500, but let's put some much needed issues out in the spotlight for those fans that want to trash talk about Bayne.

Trevor Bayne scored his first top-five in over five years Sunday

When the Knoxville, TN native first got into the Sprint Cup Series with the Wood Brothers he was racing a part-time deal and the team was under an alliance with his now full-time organization Roush Fenway Racing.  The 2011 season was probably the last fully competitive season that RFR has had in the Sprint Cup Series with Carl Edwards coming up just shy of winning the championship.  The following season a lot of changes began to take places as Matt Kenseth left for Joe Gibbs Racing, and it appeared that Roush was going to have two young drivers working their way up the ladder with Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

A lot happened in one short year for Trevor Bayne.

In 2011, he began to suffer what was later found to be the start of multiple sclerosis (MS) and he missed several events with the Wood Brothers and with Roush in the Xfinity Series.  What began as a great season winning the Daytona 500, suddenly had taken a change.  Then the following season Roush just couldn't find a full-time sponsor for Bayne to run int he Xfinity Series and he was stuck running a part-time deal with the Wood Brothers in the Sprint Cup Series.  Roush's equipment on the Sprint Cup Series side was struggling, as its main drivers had only been able to win 5 events with Kenseth and Greg Biffle.

In the back of my mind I still believe to this day that the reason for Roush's struggles was signing Carl Edwards a long-term deal and a big bonus to keep him from going to JGR in 2011, where he would eventually go anyway.  So for the next two seasons, Bayne sat in wait for a full-time ride at Roush and they needed the right sponsor to come along for him.  AdvoCare jumped on board in late 2013 to sponsor him in the 2014 Xfinity Series and in May of 2014, announced they would make the move with Bayne to the Sprint Cup Series full-time in the 2015 season.

Here's the biggest issue fans just don't get when they go and bash this young driver.  Yes, he's had some wrecked cars but most of it isn't driver related.  When you are driving cars that are handling terribly on a weekly basis and they handle the same each week with a tight in, loose off scenario, you are asking for a wreck to happen.  I knew about mid-point last season that Bob Osborne just wasn't the right crew chief for Trevor Bayne.  There was just too many issues between them, and the chemistry wasn't there to make it work out.

When Roush put Matt Puccia with Bayne, I believed this was a big time move for them.  Why would I?  A guy that only won 3 races with Greg Biffle you ask?  Because sometimes you can tell that there is something with a crew chief that another driver just might be missing out on, and I believe that was what was happening with Biffle.  Now we are eight races into 2016 and we are seeing just how much a chemistry mixture between driver and crew chief can do, along with better handling race cars will do for someone like Bayne.

His five year streak of not finishing in the top-five is over, he is consistently getting better finishers and the cars are more competitive on a weekly basis.  I think that the one big thing that goes for driver and the entire team is they have to make less mistakes.  When they get this down, they will find victory lane.  One of their strongest points might be coming up in a couple of weeks when the series goes to Talladega, as Bayne is a very strong restrictor plate racer.

The finish at Bristol just added a little bit of momentum to their season on what has been building so far.