A year later the question still lingers on

It's been a year since Trevor Bayne made his last start for the Wood Brothers organization and fans are still commenting on him not being in the 21 car.  Bayne was picked up by Jack Roush in September of 2010 when the Micheal Waltrip Racing team let him go because of lack of sponsorship.
Roush started a new program in the Xfinity Series to finish off the rest of the year and Bayne made one start with the Wood Brothers in 2010 at Texas.  Bayne was really only meant to be a one or two year loan to the Wood Brothers from Roush Fenway but instead the endeavor turned out to go a lot longer than expected until Roush could find the right sponsor for Bayne.  Now with the rumors of the Wood Brothers going full-time I am reading many comments on why they did not do it when he was racing for the organization.

Bayne was backed by Roush when he ran for the Wood Brothers.  The chassis's were the same as the RFR team were racing on the Sprint Cup side and Roush didn't have the funding to run the car full-time while Bayne was there.  He was meant to be a loaner for the organization until Jack Roush could find a slot in his organization to put Trevor Bayne in a car full-time and that happened last year when AdvoCare stepped up to the plate to sponsor Bayne in a multi-year agreement with the driver and team.  I've seen so many comparisons between Trevor Bayne and Ryan Blaney in the 21 car, but you really can't compare them when you look at the equipment that the two drivers have and had while they were in the car.

Blaney is running cars that on any given weekend are capable of winning, while Trevor Bayne was in struggling equipment from 2012 forward.  Roush just didn't put it all together to bring the Woods back to full-time material.  That was not the goal at the time when Bayne was put in the 21 car because at the time, Roush couldn't get sponsorship on the Xfinity side for Bayne, and at the time his teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr wasn't fully sponsored either. So Bayne was put with the the Wood Brothers and that is where he raced for five years until the deal with AdvoCare came into place last May.

I see a lot of wishful fans that post things about "That should be Trevor in the 21 car now."  Well the fact of the matter is, Jack Roush had a plan from the get go with Bayne and he has followed through with it.  Bayne got one of the most prestigious cars in NASCAR when he took over the 6 car.  Mark Martin gave praise to team for putting Bayne behind the wheel of the No. 6 car and this was just his first full season in the car and it has been a learning curve of course.