Something Fans Need to Know: There's a reason Trevor Bayne isn't in the 21

It's a constant comment I see as an admin and page owner on facebook "I wish Trevor Bayne was still in the 21."  Or "Trevor should have stayed with the Wood Brothers and he'd be doing much better."

Here is a little piece of the puzzle many fans know but some do not.  Back in 2010, Jack Roush signed Bayne after he was let go by Michael Waltrip Racing with about 10 races to go.  He really didn't know where to put him into the puzzle at Roush Fenway because of already having Ricky Stenhouse Jr and someone else at the time.  Bayne ran the final events on the Xfinity Series schedule that season and also ran 1 event for the Wood Brothers at Texas Motor Speedway finishing 17th.

Here's that little piece to the puzzle I mentioned.  Bayne was signed on with Roush Fenway Racing

Bayne ran the 21 from 2010 to 2014 part-time

when he was driving for the Wood Brothers.  I'm not going to take anything away from the Wood Family because they've been around a long-time but what many fans need to get the conception of when he drove that car he was pretty much driving another Roush Fenway Racing car that was sent over to the Woods.  He won the Daytona 500 in 2011 as the youngest driver ever in the sport, which was one of the biggest upset victories in our sport with the team.  The alliance with Roush and the Wood Brothers went on for many years until Bayne signed with AdvoCare to move to go full-time in the Sprint Cup Series and the Wood family then formed an alliance Team Penske and their young driver Ryan Blaney.

Here is the catch in all of this people.  Yes you are seeing the 21 car run a lot better but remember they have support from Team Penske right now, where when Trevor Bayne ran the car it was with Roush.  Since 2010, Bayne was setup to go into a Roush car in the Sprint Cup Series, it was a matter of finding sponsors and the right leverage to get him there to make it happen.  AdvoCare made the deal happen in 2014, and he parted ways with the 21 team. 

The deal with WBR served its purpose to get Bayne much needed experience but fact of the matter is, he was meant to be part of Roush Fenway from the start.  I look back at what Bayne has gone through since joining this organization and many car owners would have given up on him, so I think there is a sense of loyalty on both sides between Jack Roush and Trevor Bayne. 

Trevor Bayne, wife Ashton expecting their second child in June

The second baby Bayne is on the way.

On Monday night, Ashton was the first to reveal on her instagram account that she and Trevor would be adding a baby boy to their family next June.  The news comes a day after Ellie Kate, their first child's first birthday, Ashton posted that the two children would be 18 months apart.

Trevor went on facebook and posted for the first time in almost 6 months with his unique way of revealing the babies gender to the family. 

" 6 months without a post on here, but I feel like this is worth breaking the streak for. We are having a baby boy! Blessed to have a great wife who let me blow stuff up at the gender reveal "

Why Roush needs to get rid of leadership role among drivers

Yes I've seen this go on since 1992 Roush Fenway Racing became a multi-car operation with Mark Martin and Wally Dallenbach in the premier series of NASCAR.  The team has always had a leader among its operation in the drivers and I am already hearing the media giving that title to Ricky Stenhouse Jr., where it doesn't even need to be placed.

Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr will become a
two car operation in 2017 with Roush Fenway Racing

While it has been a busy off-season full of changes at Roush Fenway Racing going into the Holiday season there needs to be some comprehension brought up about why this isn't a good thing to give someone such as Stenhouse that "lead dog" role.  Both Stenhouse and Bayne have pretty much the same amount of experience in the top series in the sport, and both need to share the same role of providing the team with good information to go in the right direction for the future.

In the past it was Martin, Carl Edwards, or Greg Biffle that had that lead role in the organization in giving the team the information that they needed to get the cars prepared to run up front.  Now the organization goes back to two cars in 2017 with the younger duo of Bayne and Stenhouse Jr., and there lies a lot of questions on whether or not the team will be able to get back to where it came from.  Next season the two need to work closer together and give the team the solid feedback it needs to get the two Fords at the shop back in contention every weekend.

For much of these two's careers they have been driving cars that haven't handled well and are pretty much mid-pack cars.  I believe that the two have been misbranded as mediocre drivers in the sport because of the results that they have had on the track.  All you have to do is look when the two do have better race cars where they are running on the track.  There is a conception that these changes that are going on within the organization are going to make the team a much tighter core group and strengthen the team.

There was a time when Roush had two drivers that worked whole hearted to make sure that the organization got what it needed.  Martin and Jeff Burton were very competitive but they knew how to work well with one another as equals.  Back then the words jealousy, animosity, or arrogance didn't fit into organizations mold with the two drivers.  I think that now is a time for Bayne and Stenhouse to go back about 17 years and see how these two worked so well with one another to make sure they won and competed every weekend.  They were just as much friends as they were teammates and knew how to work together.

I believe from how Bayne and Stenhouse performed with one another in the NASCAR Xfinity Series years back they can have that same role together.  Yet I believe those three words I mentioned before need to be left out - jealousy, animosity and arrogance.  The reason I say this, one driver can't think he's above the rest or deserves better cars than the other.  I believe that was the problem having someone like Edwards and Biffle, they had many years on drivers like Bayne and Stenhouse that they would over ride what the youth thought about needed to go into the race cars.

Now these two need to work together like Martin and Burton and bring RFR back to it's winning ways.

What attracts the sponsors eye to Trevor Bayne

Today's fans have this thing about a driver having a relationship with a sponsor and some believe if there is no success on the track, there is going to be no success with the partnership.  There are some, however, that truly can see how a partnership like Trevor Bayne and AdvoCare have worked out for as long as it has.

Bayne signs memorabilia for fans at the AdvoCare Booth

When you look at what Trevor Bayne has done off the track at AdvoCare's independent distributors at meet and greets and speak of their products and his off the track style has helped garner the reputation for his sponsor.  AdvoCare is part of Bayne's regiment for performance with their many products in his corner.

"That relationship has been one of the best relationships, if not the best relationship; that I've had in all my career with a partner and a sponsor for more than one reason," Bayne said.  "They've committed to sponsor every single race, which is incredible at this level.  But beyond that, the people in that company and the distributors, they are all super fit people, and it motivates you to keep fit yourself and keeps you accountable."

It was late in 2013 when AdvoCare began their partnership with Bayne after they decided not to move to the Sprint Cup Series with Austin Dillon and Richard Childress Racing.  The partnership started when Bayne began to use their products after he was diagnosed with MS in 2011, so Bayne knew if he wanted to keep going further into his career he needed a change and AdvoCare was the company that took him in the right direction.

"The product is incredible, and it's been really good for me to take it to keep me fresh and hydrated before the races.  It's been a big part of my routine and helps me in the car.  Also being around fit, like the distributors, you can't be an overweight race car driver and out of shape if you're going to work for AdvoCare."

Roush has had to support its other 2
cars in Sprint Cup for 2 seasons

Next season, Bayne for the first time will have someone other than AdvoCare on his No. 6 Ford Fusion.  Liberty National Life will be on board for several races and as a major associate sponsor on the car for the 2017 season.  There have been fans question why these sponsors wanted to be on the 6 car and possibly not with Greg Biffle, Ricky Stenhouse or even Chris Buescher, however, the posture that Bayne brings to the table for sponsors is different on and off the track.

He's very composed behind the camera when he is interviewed by the media, he is able to keep his cool even through the lows of the season and thanks the sponsors he has every race.  Bayne has been the only one at Roush Fenway Racing to be able to fill a complete season with sponsors since coming on board, as teammates Ricky Stenhouse and Greg Biffle had support from Roush Performance and Ford on their cars at time that brought little to no revenue to the team.

AdvoCare re-upped through the end of the 2019 season with Trevor Bayne and Roush Fenway back in November.  The partnership that started back in 2014 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series (then Nationwide) has grown into one of the healthiest in the sport between the driver and the sponsor.

Bayne's results on the track may not weigh in to many fans on social media but his off the track performance with his sponsors has repped the results for the company that has backed him.  I have seen many AdvoCare Independent Distributors discuss Trevor Bayne's meets and all have positive reaction to the driver that their company backs.  It helps when the athlete that company backs uses their product on a regular basis.  Bayne is able to speak out to these people and what they do.

Maybe it's time the fans that question sponsors realize there's positives that outweigh the negatives.

Trevor Bayne 2016 Year In Review

In 2016, Trevor Bayne seen improvements in his numbers from the year before in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in all categories on the track.

After having a very dismal first season with Roush Fenway Racing in 2015 in the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion with only 2 top-ten finishes and finishing 29th in the series standings, Bayne stepped up in 2016 with new crew chief Matt Puccia and spotter Roman Pemberton. Puccia took over the crew chief roles after a hard season with former driver Greg Biffle in 2015, and appeared to be heading to the NASCAR Xfinity Series to work with Bubba Wallace, however, Osborne was moved to Front Row Motorsports when Chris Buescher moved in under an alliance.

Bayne posted his first top-five and top-ten finish of the season in his home state of Tennessee at Bristol Motor Speedway when he finished in fifth place in the Spring event at the half-mile track, two weeks later Bayne finished 10th at Talladega.  As it appeared the team was on its way to having found some speed in its cars through the early part of the season.  Bayne went on a stretch of finishing in the top-ten in 3 out of five events from Bristol through Dover in June.

The team's strongest showing of the season came in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.  Bayne looked to have himself right in line to make a move to win the event but would have to settle for third place in the event.  The team's last top-ten finish of the season came on the road course at Watkins Glen in a special paint scheme for AdvoCare's new Blue Raspberry Spark flavor.  Bayne would finish 9th in the event after finishing 5th the day before in the Xfinity Series race.

The last portion of the season was a struggle for Bayne and his crew as they did not score a top-ten finish for the final 13 events of the season and finished 22nd in the final points standings.  Bayne, however, improved his numbers solidly from first season with Roush Fenway Racing.  He had a better average start 20.4 compared to 27.9 in 2015.  His average finish was 19.9 compared to 25.8 in 2015, and he led 34 laps compared to 0 the year before.  Bayne also scored 21 lead lap finishes compared to 13 the year before.

Downsizing, revamping Roush Fenway could help bring it back

Back in 2010, Roger Penske went through something very similar to what Jack Roush is doing right now.  They were running three cars in the Sprint Cup Series but were struggling to get more than one car going in the direction and Team Penske went to two-cars the following season with Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski.

There are some advantages to running just two cars in the shop and while people keep posting the organization is killing itself doing this, it just maybe the cure to their issues altogether.  Roush Fenway began at the end of the season making moves to reposition personnel for 2017.  They started first by moving Robbie Reiser out of the Competition Director position and was replaced by Kevin Kidd.  In my opinion this was something that needed to happen almost two seasons ago, the organization had become stale with Reiser as its CD.  The organization's communication stand point just wasn't where it needed to be at to go any further with Reiser as its lead man.

I have felt that Kevin Kidd since the first time he really began to speak up in 2015 was going to be the person to lead this team if he was given the chance.  I think there is a strong point to having someone who came from another organization see what has happened for the past two seasons and now he's taken over as the team's Competition Director.

To be the director I feel there are a lot of things that need to come into play for the entire organization.  He needs to have better communication with the entire team than Reiser did, he needs to be able to know the current rules package that keeps changing every time we turn around, and he has to be very open minded and keep a good relationship with his team in order for them to go forward in the future.  Then there is the factor of going to two drivers and their relationship.

There's a lot of people on social media that want to bad mouth the two drivers Roush Fenway Racing has on board but these two drivers can race.  There is a factor in the cars the past few years that fans aren't considering when they've seen Bayne and Stenhouse have incidents on the track.  Trevor Bayne is a very talented young driver, he showed it coming up through the NASCAR Xfinity Series and his first years with the Wood Brothers.  Trevor Bayne is one of the most positive people I've listened to in the garage area, but it's hard to remain that way when you are driving a car that hasn't been able to turn through the corner for the past few years.

He and Stenhouse both have been driving mid pack cars since the 2012 season at Roush Fenway Racing, some don't want to see that but the facts are there.  That is why there are so many changes going on in the off-season.  Take for instance the race at Dover earlier in 2016, Bayne was able to climb his way into the top-10 because the car began to get better and he started to have the drive off the corner.  However it will not stop with the cars, the drivers are going to have to do exactly what the duo at Team Penske has been able to do and work together with one another and not be a rival with  one another.

We all know that these two had a solid relationship with one another in their earlier days in the NASCAR XFINITY Series when Stenhouse won back to back titles.  There was the Ricky Vs Trevor YouTube videos that gave fans a good laugh, and their chemistry was very good with each other.  The drivers have to go back and find what they had years ago to help bring the organization back to what it was.

The two drivers finished neck and neck in the standings this past season in the NASCAR Cup Series.

With Matt Puccia and Roman Pemberton returning to work with Trevor Bayne next season on the No. 6 AdvoCare team, I think that it brings a little more confidence by having the same two voices on the radio next season that he was able to hear in 2016.

Bayne picks up some insurance sponsorship from Liberty National in 2017

On Wednesday morning, Roush Fenway Racing announced a partnership with Liberty National Life Insurance Company, that will will have the leading health and life insurance company serve as the primary team partner on Trevor Bayne's No. 6 Ford Fusion.  Liberty National will also serve as well  as major partner in multiple races during the 2017 season.

"We are excited to have Liberty National on board next season," said Bayne.  "They are an extremely well respected brand that has been providing valuable services since 1900.  It's the kind of brand that are proud to have an association with and I can't wait to see the No. 6 Liberty National Ford on track.  Our Goal is to put our car up front and compete for race wins."

The No. 6 Liberty National Ford Fusion will make its debut on the track at Atlanta Motor Speedway in March.

"Liberty National views this new partnership with Roush Fenway Racing as the opportunity of a life time," said Liberty National President Steve DiChiaro.  "We look forward to cheering on Trevor Bayne as he drives the Liberty National car to victory lane in 2017."

This will be the first time Trevor Bayne has had someone other than AdvoCare on his No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion in the Sprint Cup Series as they have been the only major sponsor in the series for the Knoxville, TN native.

Kevin Kidd, Tommy Wheeler take over as leaders at Roush Fenway Racing

Roush Fenway Racing has announced its lineup for the 2017 season with numerous changes made to its organization.

Kevin Kidd will take over as Competition Director

Kevin Kidd will resume his role as the Sprint Cup Series Competition Director and Tommy Wheeler will serve as the team's Operation Director in 2017.  The team announced that it will be leasing its charter from the 16 car and loaning driver Chris Buescher to JTG Racing in 2017.

"We have been able to shore up our plans for 2017 and we feel that this will continue to move us in a direction that will yield improved performance and results," said owner co-owner Jack Roush.  "We say improvement in our cars and made substantial gains in our performance at times last season, and we will continue to build on that by maintaining a robust engineering group in order  to take the next step by consistently running up front."

Matt Puccia who led Trevor Bayne last season on the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Racing team will return

Puccia will remain crew chief for Trevor Bayne in 2017

to duty as the leader of the team in 2017.  It will be the first time that Bayne will have the same crew chief for consecutive seasons while at Roush Fenway Racing in the Cup Series.  Brian Pattie, who was the crew chief Greg Biffle on the No. 16 Cup Series team, will take over as the crew chief of the No. 17 car and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., as Nick Sandler who was the crew chief of the team will be moved to the role of Director Of Engineering.

Robbie Reiser who was moved from his position last week, will remain with the organization in a yet to be determined position.

Kidd who moved to Roush Fenway Racing in 2015, served as the team manager of the Cup Series teams after coming from Joe Gibbs Racing where he worked as a crew chief for several seasons.

Wheeler has been on board Roush Fenway since 2009, he has 20-plus years of experience in the sport, he served in many positions for the team, including the team's production director since 2011, overseeing the building and production of all the organization's Cup and XFINITY cars.

This will be the first time since 1995 that Roush Fenway less than 3 cars in the Cup Series.

Reiser moved from general manager position at Roush

It's that time again.  The carousel of changes in the NASCAR world is happening once again right after the season has ended.  Once again Roush Fenway was in the news yesterday afternoon with a huge announcement.

Greg Biffle and Robbie Reiser both are out at RFR

Long-term Roush Fenway member Robbie Reiser has been relieved of his general manager duties after serving the role since the 2008 season when he stepped down from being the crew chief of Matt Kenseth.  Reiser won Roush Fenway's first Sprint Cup (then Winston Cup) with Kenseth in 2003.

Word is that Reiser was offered a position in car production but has yet to decide where his future will be in the sport.  This could be the first of many moves to move Roush Fenway Racing in a different direction since neither Trevor Bayne nor Ricky Stenhouse Jr finished in the top-20 in the points standings and failed to win a race in 2016.

Stenhouse and Bayne have been teammates
Since 2010 in the Xfinity Series

For the last two seasons the organization has made critical hires to try to help the improvement of its cars and the atmosphere of the shop.  While both Bayne and Stenhouse did show improvement on the track in their statistics, the struggles on track were still clear that there needed to be more changes made to the organization to help improve them for the future and possibly get back to 3 cars.

The two drivers finished 10 points apart in the final standings in 21st and 22nd and looked to be making improvements on the season until mid-August when the series left Bristol.  It appeared after Chris Buescher won the race at Pocono for Front Row Motorsports things slid backwards for both Bayne and Stenhouse.  The two drivers did make huge improvements on where they were

Roush Fenway headed to 2 cars in 2017?

It didn't take long for the domino's to begin to fall at Roush Fenway Racing after the season ended on Sunday in Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Many had been hearing the rumors going around, including myself about Greg Biffle leaving the organization at the end of the season to go somewhere else.  On Monday afternoon, Biffle posted on twitter that it was a mutual agreement to part ways that had been in place months ahead for the end of the end of 2016.  Then later in the afternoon news began to start coming out that Chris Buescher would be going to JTG Daughtery Racing on a loan out from Roush Fenway and Ford Performance next season in a second car.

Will Stenhouse(left) and Trevor Bayne be a two-car pair in 2017?

That leaves the obvious out there for fans to really see the true light in this.  Roush is going to be a two-car operation for the first time since 1995 when Mark Martin and Ted Musgrave were in the 6 and 16 cars for Roush Racing.  There is a lot of problems with the organization right now and many speculate that it is the upper deck management group that is running the organization, Robbie Reiser and Steve Newmark.   Two years ago I thought the hiring of Mark McArdle and Kevin Kidd was progress and then Kevin Kidd began to bring in more key people to the organization last December.

In March 2015, Kidd made comments about the progression he felt about the organization and believed that it was going to take several seasons to rebuild things.

"Rome was not built in a day and we're in the process of building Rome back up," told Motorsports.com at the time.  "It's going to take time.  That's the simple truth.  I had some perspective on it this week like when you look at other organizations that are down and trying to build back up - Ganassi comes to mind.  Penske, maybe less so but maybe from a few years back.  It's a solid two to three year process of trying to get back to full form and ultimate competitive level.  I'll stop short of of saying it will take two to three years, but it's going to take time."

"When you look at where we're trying to go with this, we're trying to change the culture of Roush Fenway Racing, how we've done business in the past and wow we'll do business in the future.  Ultimately, that change, more so than nuts and bolts of race cars, but change of our working philosophies, that's what will get us back to a competitive level - and that takes time."

Now we're another year down the road and yes the organization did improve from 2015 but it was the first time since Jack Roush opened shop in 1988 that one of his cars did not win a race in either series in NASCAR.  So now it appears that going back to two cars might be the way to go but why?

There is less information to spread around between two cars than three, the drivers can communicate more freely with each other and so can the engineers and crew chiefs.  While we have not heard if there are going to be crew chief and crew changes to either Bayne or Stenhouse's teams next season we do know they will be the drivers and know that they can work together. I believe that the organization took more of what Biffle wanted than the two younger drivers needed and it wasn't paying its due.

Team Penske has been making it with two cars and drivers that have good chemistry for quite a while in the Sprint Cup Series.  Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski have been able to win races and be competitive as a two-car team up until Team Penske paired with the Wood Brothers to bring up Ryan Blaney in the Sprint Cup Series.

Bayne, AdvoCare one of the few deals that are working off the track

I sat and listened to a lot of people push some rumors in front of my face the past two months, a lot of it was pretty negative towards Trevor Bayne and his sponsor AdvoCare.  AdvoCare and Trevor Bayne have been a solid core since the beginning of the 2014 season when they joined up with one another for Bayne's final Xfinity Series season. AdvoCare won the 2013 championship with Austin Dillon on the No. 3 Richard Childress Chevrolet in the Xfinity Series and had been on his car since 2012, however, AdvoCare liked what they seen in Bayne when he met their lead man at the track.

Understanding a relationship that sponsors and drivers have can sometimes be pretty hard, however, there is a big SPARK between Trevor Bayne and AdvoCare that makes this partnership work out.  He is liked among most of the independent distributors that provide AdvoCare products to people.  This is a well spoken young man that handles himself well in front of the camera, he has a setback with multiple sclerosis and still races. 

It was a couple of weeks ago my elementary school PE teacher gave NASCAR a big shout out for being the only sport that prayed before every event and telling the TV networks that carry them you don't cut the camera.  I brought up the Christian base of the France family, and then I replied on face book about Trevor Bayne.  He researched him and found he had MS.  I explained that Bayne stayed fit with great products from his sponsor and he was a very well recognized face in the sport as the youngest Daytona 500 winner.

I have a friend who is a Jimmie Johnson fan and when she first began watching Trevor that he was the type of person that she would want a daughter to bring home to you an introduce.  Part of that is why AdvoCare really reps the benefits of having him as one of their Sports Endorsers.  From 1993-2000, Mark Martin had sponsorship from Valvoline Oil and they shared a very similar relationship with one another.  Sponsors and drivers sometimes have that working relationship together that sometimes it isn't always about on track results. 

Bayne keeping solid deal with AdvoCare a plus for Roush

Yesterday in the midst of an announcement many were eased of some rumors that had been spreading around that Roush Fenway was trying to outs Trevor Bayne as a driver.  The team announced that AdvoCare and Bayne had renewed their deal with the organization for three more seasons, through the 2019 season.

There have been driver/sponsorship pairings that have blossomed throughout the years, look at how long STP stuck by Richard Petty, Miller with Rusty Wallace, Dupont with Jeff Gordon, Valvoline with Mark Martin, or Lowe's with Jimmie Johnson.  The fact is AdvoCare and Bayne have really had a good pairing together, even though they have yet to find their way into victory lane together in NASCAR.  They did win the ARCA race at Pocono in 2015 in a unique designed car.  Their relationship goes far more than just the sponsorship, Bayne is an avid user of their products and he is an Independent Distributor for the company, along with his wife Ashton.

What many fans hate to admit is NASCAR is a big a business in itself and it is driven by sponsorship.  When all these rumors came up there were fans that expected AdvoCare was going to ditch Bayne because of the performance, but what many don't understand is there is always another side to the story we're never told.  It's not always on track performance that gets a sponsorship out there, it takes a solid spokesman for that company to go to the meet and greets.  I don't think I've read a negative thing from an AdvoCare rep yet that has seen and met Trevor and Ashton, and now little Ellie at their meets during race weekends. 

There are just some sponsors that are made for the driver and vise versa.  The big thing is Roush Fenway really needed to push to keep this deal in their organization for a major reason, they are struggling to keep sponsorship on the other two cars and it's why the big rumor of switching to two cars is really the biggest rumor coming up now.  Like Trevor or not, he is solidly the only guy at Roush that can provide the team with major sponsorship for the entire season.

Done Deal: Bayne, AdvoCare sign multi-year agreement with Roush Fenway

Roush Fenway Racing announced this afternoon that they have signed a new three year renewal with AdvoCare to continue to be the primary sponsorship on Trevor Bayne's No. 6 Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. 

The company has been a partner with Trevor Bayne since the opening of the 2014 NASCAR Xfinity Series season and moved up with the 2011 Daytona 500 champion to the Sprint Cup Series in 2015. 

"AdvoCare has been an outstanding partner to work with, and I am really excited to continue this relationship and represent AdvoCare for three more seasons," Bayne said.  "It's a top notch organization with a great group of employees and Independent Distributors who share our core principles of hard work and determination."

"For me it's more than a sponsorship," the 25 year old Knoxville native stated.  "I regular use their products to stay in top form on and off the track.  My wife Ashton and I are also Independent Distributors for AdvoCare, as are several other Roush Fenway employees."

This weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, Trevor Bayne will be sporting a new paint scheme in honor
of the Seal Legacy Foundation.

 The Seal Legacy Foundation is dedicated to providing support, including financial assistance and educational assistance to families of wounded and fallen United States Navy SEALs, and other charitable causes benefiting the SEAL community. 

Many Rumors and Questions Surround 2017 Roush Fenway lineup

It was a couple weeks ago after the race weekend in Charlotte ended, I began to get phone calls concerning Trevor Bayne's future with future with Roush Fenway Racing.  Rumors are just that rumors until there is more spark to the fire.  Then the beginning of last week, Greg Biffle started it all off saying he was ready for a change in his career, along with Cheez-It/Kelloggs announcing that they would no longer be with Roush Fenway Racing or Watkins Glen International next season. Then by the end of the week a rumor came out that he would be running a second JTG Daughtery car in 2017, pretty much received a call confirming that on Sunday from a friend who's husband works at HScott Motorsports and was told Steve Addington would be going with Greg Biffle.

Changes in the Horizon for Roush Fenway

Now it seems that the biggest rumor floating around the garage is Roush Fenway going to two cars next season.  It seems logic that it will be Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driving the cars since they are the ones with sponsorship and contracts for the upcoming season.  It has been 21 years since Roush Fenway Racing has ran less than 3 race cars in the Sprint Cup Series circuit, it was 1995 with Mark Martin and Ted Musgrave.  I'm not sure what would happen with their third charter that is on the 16 car, maybe lease to Front Row Motorsports for a short term or to another team.

Two cars would give the team a better chance to to work with one another and it is one less car to float information back and forth to.  I truly believe that might be the way to go if you look at how Team Penske has been doing it the last few years.   Bayne and Stenhouse back in the then Nationwide Series had a good working core chemistry to find the right setups in their race cars from 2010-2011, when the two were competing for RFR full-time in the series then.  Stenhouse won back to back championships in the series in 2011-2012.

Many expected after Ryan Reed ran the race at Talladega last weekend that Roush Fenway would be bringing back the 99 car next season.  However, his sponsor Lilly Diabetes announced that they would be returning to sponsor Reed in the NASCAR Xfinity Series next season.  Rumors are going around that Chris Buescher will return to the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports car for 2017.

I am sure there are going to be some people who disagree with me on what you are about to read but it is my opinion.  I think Greg Biffle going on might be a good thing for this organization in several ways. Biffle is 46 years old and that is a big difference mark in Bayne and Stenhouse who are 25 and 29, so here is where people will likely disagree with me. I think the difference in age has been a hold back for Roush Fenway in a way.  Biffle has been the main driver the team has gone to the past two seasons to put data for the direction they need to go.  His age differential and driving style are much different than the two younger drivers.

So now if Roush does go to the two car system it will be a little easier to direct the team in the direction they need to go.  We will see in the coming weeks when the team makes their announcements what will happen.

Darlington offers that throwback appeal with Trevor Bayne in a Mark Martin scheme

Mark Martin ran the paint scheme that Trevor Bayne will have on his No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion this weekend at Darlington Raceway from 1996-1997 and was able to win four races at Sonoma, Talladega, Michigan and Dover in 1997.  This is the second season that Bayne has been able to honor Roush Fenway's long-time driver, last season Bayne ran Martin's 1998-1999 scheme with the Flying A paint scheme. 

What makes this car even more special was in 1996, Martin went on a long losing streak and ended it in this paint scheme with back to back wins at Sonoma and then set the record for the fastest ever race at Talladega Superspeedway in a caution free event. 

"It's an honor anytime you are mentioned alongside Mark Martin, " Bayne said back in April when the paint scheme was released.  "He obviously contributed a lot to Roush Fenway and this organization, so to carry a paint scheme that he ran for the second year in a row is really cool.  Our team has been working really hard and running well this season, so I'm hopeful that we can make Mark proud."

Mark Martin will be one of the Hall of Fame drivers on hand for the event, which for the second year is back for Labor Day weekend.  Earlier this year Martin was voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame by members of the committee and fans. 

"It's going to be really cool to see that car on the track again at Darlington,"  Martin said.  "It's always been one of my favorite paint schemes and we had a lot of good times taking that car to victory lane and leading a lot of laps during that time.  I look at it as a tribute to all the guys that put the hard work in on those cars and gave us the opportunity to go out and compete each week."

Here is the original car that Martin drove to victory lane 4 times.

How do you not consider Trevor Bayne's 2016 not to be a success

Last weekend at Watkins Glen International, Trevor Bayne scored his fifth top-ten finish of the season in the Sprint Cup Series and his first career top-ten on a road course venue.  Bayne's five top-tens already have amassed the equal amount of top-ten finishes that he did his first few years with the Wood Brothers and Roush Fenway last season.  So how would you go and say Bayne's season is not a success?

Sure there is a chance that Bayne may miss out on making the Chase this season but who can say at the beginning of the year that they even had Trevor Bayne in the picture to be a contender to one of the top-16 finishers?  All I heard at the beginning of the season was that Jack Roush needed to find someone else to be in this car and replace Trevor Bayne.  Yet there was this mixture of chemistry that happened this season between driver and crew chief.

Trevor Bayne meets with fans at Watkins Glen during
the weekend

Trevor Bayne and Matt Puccia clicked this season. Even though they've not won a race this season I've seen a huge difference in Trevor Bayne this season, a lot of things many people said was missing inside of him.  One was a major boost in his confidence this season, the cars have gotten better and the team has not made the same mistakes that were made last season.  With four races remaining at Bristol, Michigan, Darlington and Richmond, Bayne still has a small chance to make it into the Chase this season but with Chris Buescher winning at Pocono it was a hit on them if Buescher is to make it into the top-30 in the points standings.

While there are a lot of fans suffering with disappointment I understand that Trevor Bayne's season has been a true mark of success compared to year's past.  Bayne has more top-five finishes (2), more top-tens (5), more laps led (34), however where Trevor Bayne's numbers truly made a huge increase were in average start and finish.  Last season Bayne's average start was 27.0, this season it is down to 19.1, his average finish last season was 25.8; this season it is 17.8 in the first 22 events of the season.  Throw in the fact that Bayne only had 13 lead lap finishes last season and he's finished on the lead lap 16 of the 22 events this season that is truly a huge improvement on himself and his race team.

Bayne also gained an experienced spotter with Roman Pemberton this season that who in my opinion has kept Bayne out of a lot of trouble on the track this season that his spotter last season did not.  Roman combines a lot of spark and confidence on the radio during the races, something I believe was really lacking last season. When someone gets into Bayne, he's told them several times not to take their bullying and go get them.

Through it all Bayne has been leading his Roush Fenway organization in most numbers this season and looks to be the only one from Roush with a justified chance to make it in on points without winning a race, unless you count Chris Buescher who races for Front Row Motorsports.  Bayne has some good tracks coming up that he ran well in the spring, Bristol in the Spring he finished, Michigan has been one of his strongest tracks overall, Darlington is still a big question mark and Richmond Bayne finished 17th in the Spring.

Bayne surges from 32nd to finish 9th at the Glen

Trevor Bayne used some experience he gained racing in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday afternoon at Watkins Glen International to help him out in the Sprint Cup Series Cheez It 355 At The Glen on Sunday. 

Sporting two similar paint schemes for the two events to announce AdvoCare's new Blue Raspberry flavor of Spark, Bayne finished fifth on Saturday in the Zippo 200 in the No. 60 AdvoCare Ford Mustang after being spun early in the event by Brad Keselowski.  Bayne qualified his No. 6 in 32nd on Saturday just before the Xfinity Series race began, so it would seem the Sprint Cup team was well off what the Xfinity team ran.

Bayne patiently worked his way up on Sunday afternoon.  He quickly reported to crew chief Matt Puccia that his No. 6 AdvoCare Spark Ford Fusion was very loose, especially through the Esses.  Bayne maneuvered himself up to 23rd before the first round of green flag pit stops began on lap 23, as he was up to 21st before the caution flag fell on lap 48.  In the past several weeks, Bayne had issues with the 47 of AJ Allmendinger on the track, when the 47 went to make a pass midway through the race, Bayne gave him a nudge as spotter Roman Pemberton quickly came over the radio "I saw what you did with your buddy with that free shot there Trevor."

Puccia decided to bring Bayne in for four tires and fuel.  Four laps later a caution flag gave Matt Puccia the chance to make a call and keep Bayne out on the course as many of the race leaders were making their stops. 

The decision had Bayne up in fourth position before a caution flag shuffled Bayne back on a restart as he was continuing to battle for position inside the top-10.  Caution flags kept coming as Bayne maintained his position inside the top-15 on the track and on the final restart he lined up 11th.  He was able to get around Matt Kenseth for 10th and with a late race wreck by Kyle Larson, Bayne was able to move into 9th. 

After the finish Bayne is now 8 points outside of the top-16 in the points standings with four races remaining at Bristol, Michigan, Darlington and Richmond.  If Bayne's Roush Fenway teammate on loan to Front Row Motorsports Chris Buescher is able to get into the top-30 in the points, he would be 38 points behind Jamie McMurray.

"This is a good weekend.  A fifth and a ninth," said Bayne after the race. "That is a good road course weekend for me considering I am not a road course ace.  The thought was to try to get better and I think we did that this weekend.  We made progress and that is really good.  We are excited.  Hopefully we can keep getting better at these and contend for a win one day."

Bayne quietly leading Roush Fenway Racing through the first half of 2016

Before this season started you heard a few things like 'Trevor Bayne can't race at the top level, he doesn't have the talent, he doesn't have what it takes to be a contender for the Chase,' but we are half way through the year and we're seeing something much different this season out of the driver from Knoxville, TN.

Many felt that Ricky Stenhouse Jr., would be the leader for Roush Fenway this season with more experience and more time with crew chief Nick Sandler but quietly and patiently, it has been Trevor Bayne and Matt Puccia leading the way for Roush's team with the best average finish of anyone there (17.3) and they are only 10 points out of being in the Chase going into this weekend's race at New Hampshire.  Bayne probably has shown the most improvement of any driver this season in the first half of the season as he has been able to improve on every number except for adding a victory to the win column. 

Bayne has scored more top-five finishes (2), more top-tens (4) and his average finish has improved by 8.5 positions this seasons.  Bayne also has led more laps this season with 34 than he did all his years combined before this season.  As of right now he is the only driver at Roush Fenway Racing with a legitimate shot at making it into the Chase on points going into New Hampshire after his teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr., finished in 40th last weekend in Kentucky. 

Matt Puccia has helped give Bayne better cars and confidence

The key for the remainder of the season is to be able to have speed in their cars so fuel mileage won't have to be a factor in getting a good finish.  When this season began there was also a lot of questions put on a decision RFR made putting Matt Puccia with Bayne.  Puccia had very little success with veteran Greg Biffle in their term together; only winning three events together.  However, Bayne and Puccia have found a lot that they are in common together and have formed a core bond that has helped them work together on and off the track. 

There is more a more confident Trevor Bayne this season as many people have caught on.  Trevor Bayne told Claire B Lang on her show a couple weeks ago it is all about the opportunity and being confident in his crew chief and spotter.  There's a big difference in the cars that this team had year ago compared to this season and in my opinion, I hear a difference in spotter Roman Pemberton compared to last year with Freddie Kraft who is now on the 16 team.  Bayne needed a spotter he could feel confident that if he tells him the leaders are running this line, he can move up there and it work.  I just didn't hear that last year, and it worked the same way with the crew chief as well when he had Bob Osborne.

I've talked to many people that have been around Trevor Bayne for a good amount of his career.  He hasn't change, he's still the same driver he was when he competed in Michael Waltrip's cars and sat on poles and looked like a stellar young star.  The difference is Roush Fenway's cars took a fall off for several years and they're finally beginning to show a sign of performance turn around this season and you are seeing that confidence come back to Trevor this season.  When he made that move in the Sprint All Star Show Down back in May, it showed he had a lot of what people have not seen over the last several years while he raced for the Wood Brothers and his first season with RFR. 

Those that want to think Bayne doesn't have talent need to go back and look at a few races where he did have decent cars through the years and see solid finishes.  Bayne won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Iowa a few years back in a fierce battle with Austin Dillon and he did the bump and run on Dillon.  A year later he gave Kyle Busch all he wanted at Dover in the Xfinity Series race there, and this year he has slowly began to show he isn't afraid to race against the Sprint Cup Series biggest stars. 

When you give him good race cars Trevor Bayne will perform.  Plain and simple. That is why he is leading Roush Fenway this season!

Bayne continues to eat away at Chase deficit

It may not have been the prettiest way to plug away at a margin in the points standings but with an 11th place finish at Kentucky Speedway last night, Trevor Bayne is now only 10 points away from being 16th in the Chase Grid Standings.  Bayne continues to show improvement with crew chief Matt Puccia and spotter Roman Pemberton through the first half of the season and lead the Roush Fenway organization this season when many people doubted their talents.

Trevor Bayne passes Kyle Busch early on at Kentucky Speedway

Last night, the No. 6 AdvoCare team stretched their fuel mileage and was able to make it the final 71 laps on the tank of fuel his team put in the car on their final stop and was able to finish 11th in the Quaker State 400 but it didn't come without a few challenges through the night.  Bayne first avoided the huge accident earlier in the night on lap 94 that took many cars out of the field, and then had a little bit of a run in with the No. 38 of Landon Cassill that put some damage on Bayne's left rear quarter panel before Cassill eventually went for a spin on lap 195 that was the final caution of the night.

Now the team goes on the long summer stretch that will be the tall order to see if they can make it into the Chase.  The series will travel to New Hampshire this coming weekend then Indianapolis, and then they return back to Pocono for the second time this season to end the month of July.  Then they will go to Watkins Glen for the final road course race of the season and finally catch a weekend off before going to Bristol where Bayne finished fifth earlier in the season.

Bayne made a statement to his crew chief Matt Puccia at the end of the race on Saturday night, "I don't care how pretty it is, as long as we keep getting these good finishes."  The one key thing is the 6 team has yet to have a race this season where they've failed to finish.  A big improvement from the 2015 season a year ago.

New Hampshire has not been one of Trevor Bayne's best tracks in either division that he's competed in, however, in the NASCAR Xfinity Series he did have a fifth place finish early on in his career, along with two more top-ten finishes; while leading 58 laps.  With the Roush Fenway team finding some momentum lately this might be a good chance for them to eat away even more of McMurray's margin in the standings and get themselves into Chase contention.

New Aero Package in place at Michigan for FireKeepers Casino 400

This weekend the Sprint Cup Series goes to Michigan for its 15th race on the schedule and once again they'll be racing with a new aero package this weekend at the two-mile speedway.  Last season fans didn't care for the high drag package that NASCAR implanted on teams at the track, but this season many drivers and crew chiefs feel that the racing will be better with the lower down force package.

NASCAR will make changes to the rear spoiler, front splitter and rear deck fin for two upcoming races to see how it plays out with the first being at Michigan this weekend.  It is a proposal to continue to lower the aerodynamic downforce and the sideforce in an effort to make the competition closer the intermediate race tracks.  The changes are similar to what the teams ran at Charlotte in the Sprint All-Star race. 

Michigan has had some snoozefest races in the past few years and NASCAR is hoping that this weekend the package will make the racing much more competitive.  Last season, Trevor Bayne finished 9th in the rain shortened event at the track.   The race only had 17 lead changes throughout the event in 2015.

The changes for this weekend's race consist of of a reduction in spoiler height from 3.5 inches to 2.5 inches, a splitter reduction of two inches and a re-sizing of the rear deck fin to complement the spoiler change.

There's 14 down and there's big signs of improvement with Team AdvoCare

There's still the occasional fan from another driver that has something negative to say about Trevor Bayne but the proof is in the pudding this season that he and his No. 6 AdvoCare crew have made huge strides to improve this season.

Matt Puccia been a big part of the improvement in 2016

Daytona wasn't much improvement, they jumped two positions to 28th from a 30th.  In Atlanta they took a drop off of last season's 19th place finish and took home 22nd, but had some adversity with tire issues after starting 3rd that afternoon.  Las Vegas was a big improvement, jumping up to 17th from 28th a year before on the 1.5 mile track.  At Phoenix, Bayne finished 23rd, an improvement off the 28th place finish place in 2015.  Also Trevor Bayne had made a jump up in the series points standings to 21st from 26th.

The No. 6 AdvoCare team really began to show some stride at Fontana and had a tire not gone down on the car, Bayne might have gotten a top-ten finish.  He still rallied back to finish 20th which was much better than 2015's 29th place finish.  The team struggled at Martinsville and didn't improve as they finished 27th compared to 18th a year before.  At Texas, crew chief Matt Puccia was going for the win with fuel mileage and a late caution backfired on them, but they were still able to get back on the lead lap and finish 15th, 3 positions better than 2015.

The season's best race so far came at Bristol.  Bayne's home track where he took home a fifth place finish and improved his finishing position by 23 positions from 2015 (28th).  It was the start of some momentum for Bayne and his crew.  They finished 17th at Richmond, a seven position improvement from the year before on the 3/4 mile.  Bayne was in contention throughout the entire race at Talladega Superpseedway, he was pushed out of the lead draft lead and still finished 10th, 31 positions better than 2015.  At Kansas another tire issue gave them trouble and they finished 25th, still an improvement from last season's 31st place finish.

Another top-10 finish came at Dover, when Bayne finished 10th, 33 positions better than last season.  In Charlotte, Bayne and the team just struggled throughout the night with the setup on their car and finished 25th, two position improvement from the year before.  Last weekend at Pocono, Bayne was able to use a little bit of fuel mileage strategy from his crew chief Matt Puccia to get a 13th place finish which helped him improve last season's finish by 11 positions.  Also at this point last season, Bayne was sitting 30th in the series standings and now sits 20th, a 10 position jump.

Their average finish last season for the entire season was a dismal 25.8, this season it has improved up to a 18.4. The other big number to look at is there is also a big Easter Egg in the DNF column this season with Trevor Bayne's numbers.  He's been able to keep the car out of trouble and survive.

This weekend the series goes to Michigan and will run a similar package to what the teams ran at Charlotte in the NASCAR All Star race and Trevor Bayne ran very well with it at Charlotte.  So we'll see if the improvements keep coming.

Roush Fenway puts three cars in the top-12 in Charlotte Qualifying

Trevor Bayne's patriotic paint scheme for Sunday
Photo Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

For the first time since August 2014 at Michigan Roush Fenway Racing put all three of it's Ford Fusions inside the top-12 in Sprint Cup Series qualifying.  The last time RFR put all three cars in the final round of qualifying was at Michigan Speedway on August 17, 2014 when Carl Edwards, Ricky Stenhouse and Greg Biffle all three made the final round but did not all make the top-10 in the session.

In recent weeks, Trevor Bayne has enjoyed the most success of the Roush Fenway drivers scoring three top-ten finishes in the last five races and making the Sprint All Star race last weekend.  Bayne seemed to take it easy on his tires through the first round of knockout qualifying and was 22nd at the end of the session, but came back in the second round and put his AdvoCare Ford solidly inside the top-12 to make it into the final round of the session. 

Bayne then turned in the 10th fastest lap of the session in the final round in a special AdvoCare paint scheme.  Teammates Ricky Stenhouse and Greg Biffle qualified 3rd and 6th. 

"We're 10th again and like I said a couple of weeks ago we're kind of disappointed with 10th," said Trevor Bayne after his run.  "That's a refreshing thing to be disappointed with and all our teammates - third, sixth, and 10th - that's a pretty good day for Roush Fenway Racing.  That's kind of back to where we were in 2011, '12 when things were looking up for us.  We're glad to be heading the right direction.  We just missed the balance a little bit in my car.  It has speed in it and it definitely had enough to be a pole car today if we just hit the balance right.  We maybe over-adjusted a little bit and expected too much out of the race track with cool temps.  We were just overall too tight and didn't have enough adjustment in the car.  We got it too free trying, but it's a really good day for our AdvoCare Ford.  We can see the front from there and hopefully we can work our way to it."

Newmark: I think Matt Puccia and Trevor (Bayne) Are Clicking

With no testing permitted by NASCAR anymore, the Sprint All-Star race was a good chance for the No. 6 AdvoCare team to try things out to use in the Coca-Cola 600 to find more speed for this weekend's race.  Trevor Bayne finished 7th in the event but during Roush Fenway's Fan Day Q&A mentioned that he felt really good about last weekend and could really build on it.

Trevor Bayne signs autographs during Roush Fan Day 

Roush Fenway's cars have been getting faster on the mile and half tracks, as Trevor Bayne led laps at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this season and might have had a chance to win the event on fuel mileage had the cards been played right.  Right now after five events on the 1.5 mile tracks, Bayne's average finish on the tracks are at 15.8, which is much better compared to last season's total average at the mile and half venues at 23.72.

The 600 is an endurance race for the driver and the equipment this weekend, Trevor Bayne mentioned during the Q&A he was prepared for it. 

"It's a long race, this year I've been working on my fitness and endurance and things like that," stated Bayne.  "I think 600 mile race people can get really tired so uh, I look forward to that and the challenge of it. I think our cars have been fast at the mile and halves like I said so if we can build on what we did last weekend we can have a really solid race; 600 miles is a lot of time to make a mistake pit road or on in the car so you have to eliminate mistakes to get a good finish.  So I think if we have a solid top-10 day we will keep moving up in points and that's what we need to be doing right now."

During an interview with Sirius NASCAR Radio, Roush Fenway President Steve Newmark was asked by Chocolate Meyers "what he had been feeding Trevor Bayne lately?"  Newmark responded "Well I think you guys recognize recognize it but I'm not sure fans always appreciate how much confidence matters for an entire team.  That's not just in racing but in all sports, but very prominent in racing as well and that whole team is humming right now."

"I think Matt Puccia and Trevor are clicking, we're building faster race cars and Trevor stuck right in there and took it three wide and was able to get the victory.  I love how aggressive he is in driving saw him a little fun racing at the end of the All Star Race with Kurt Busch and I think that's what everyone in this sport wants to see.

"When you give these guys cars that have the ability to win and to run up front and have the speed they recognize it and appreciate it, they can be more aggressive and they can take a different approach.  We know our drivers have the talent, just need to continue to give them the equipment that allows them to showcase it."

It is something that many fans are starting to take notice in Trevor Bayne this season.  He's gotten a lot more confidence in his crew and he's able to make the moves to get to the front that he wasn't able to do so last season.  Newmark hit on something that many of us have been discussing for the last couple of seasons, give these guys good cars and they will perform.

Mark Martin finally get's his Crown Jewel

I was a little kid when a first heard about this new guy from Arkansas coming into racing with a new car owner.  My dad worked at Winn Dixie in the same small-town his in-laws were from and I quickly became a fan of Mark Martin in 1988.

I didn't go for Mark Martin for the winning, the moving people out of the way, I went for Mark because he was a true class act on and off the race track from the first time I met him until now and that is why he truly deserves to be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.  You can look at Mark Martin's statistics, he's got 40 wins in the premier division of NASCAR, 56 poles, finished second in the points standings 5 times, won 49 NASCAR Xfinity Series races, and 7 Camping World Truck Series, and 4 ASA championships.

Yet it's not those numbers that I think make this guy a Hall of Famer.  I met Mark at Winn Dixie in a autograph signing in 1991 and he told me I've got one word for you if you want to make it in racing "Commitment." I seen all of Mark's ups, and all of his downs throughout his entire racing career, from winning his first race at Rockingham in 1989 with the Strohs Light Thunderbird, losing two very close championship battles with Dale Earnhardt and Tony Stewart due to points being taken away by NASCAR. 

Who knows, had Mark Martin raced like Dale Earnhardt he might have had a couple of

championships but it just wasn't his style of racing.  However it is what made me a fan from the first time I seen him.  I always put a strong believe it isn't the size of the man but his character that makes him who he is, and Mark Martin is a giant of a man when it comes to that.  It makes this year's Darlington throwback car with Trevor Bayne even more special considering the tribute it will be making to a Hall of Fame driver this season.  Mark Martin won 3 times with that paint scheme in 1997. 

Back to that commitment.  He told me it was a promise to yourself to do the very best at what you are good at to get you where you want to be.  I'll never forget being a kid and meeting this man, back then he was my hero I always looked up to because of things just like today when he was interviewed by NBC NASCAR America.  Mark felt many other guys should have gone in the Hall Of Fame before he did, but he was well deserving of it.  It's not just the W's in the column that make get you that jacket, it's respect, dignity and commitment.

All-Star weekend shows the cars are finally catching up to the drivers at RFR

One of the hottest topics after last night's race in Charlotte was how Trevor Bayne raced more aggressively in the Sprint All-Star race.  Bayne battled with veterans Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski late in the event and had a rough few laps with Busch that everyone seemed to be talking about.

Bayne won the Show Down and Finished 7th in the All-Star

While there are still a lot of naysayers out there Bayne seemed to make an impression on a lot of people with his aggressive driving in both the All-Star Show Down and in the All-Star race.  What people need to realize is that in the last few years, even while Bayne was racing in the XFINITY Series for Roush Fenway Racing that the cars just were not up to par with the drivers talent within the organization.  This season the cars have finally caught up it seems with the drivers driving ability and it showed during this weekend.

It is hard for a driver to make an aggressive move when a race car is hard to drive and the trend is the same every weekend you are faced with two dilemma's.  One drive a car much slower and try not wreck it or race aggressively and wreck every weekend.  I do believe that that there were races last season where Trevor Bayne tried to race harder than the car would go, and it cost him.  This season there have been a lot of key changes that were made within RFR that has made that has made their team better.

-  There were 3 key hires in the off-season with Kurt Romberg (Aerodynamic Specialist), Kent Day (Manager of Simulation) and Vojin Jaksic (Strategic Panning).
-  Roush Fenway Racing paired Matt Puccia and Roman Pemberton with Trevor Bayne after Chris Buescher's XFINITY Series crew Chief Scott Graves parted ways and went to Joe Gibbs, and RFR moved Bob Osborne over to Front Row Motorsports with Buescher.
- Roush Fenway Racing made a change to the way that their organization and environment in the team is worked. The teams all share one shop now and the cars are all built the same, except for a few minor things that can be easily changed out during a race weekend.

So if you really think this is the first time that Bayne has been aggressive, it's not.  In his earlier years with RFR he had a lot of aggressive times.  Winning his first race at Texas in 2011 he made a similar move in the XFINITY Series race to get the lead as he did on Saturday in the Show Down and racing Austin Dillon for the race win at Iowa in 2013 he beat and banged with the 3 car until he took the top spot for good.

Bayne has not had great cars in the Sprint Cup Series probably since his first year in the series when he won the Daytona 500.  Now he is getting much better race cars and you are starting to see him able to race the same way he raced a few years back and it is that same competitive aggressive style that people have been saying he has been missing.

Bayne powers his way passed Elliott on final lap to make Sprint All Star Race

Trevor Bayne took a little open hole on a restart and made it into a wide open entrance into the Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday morning in the NASCAR Sprint Show Down in Charlotte. 

Bayne started the race fifth by rule book standards due to the rain cancelling qualifying for the Sprint Show Down.  He told crew chief Matt Puccia and Spotter Roman Pemberton "Alright guys. Today is about fun and winning -- which is more fun. Let's go get it.".  It didn't look as if he'd have a chance early in the first segment to advance into the main event until a caution flag came out when the No. 95 of Michael McDowell spun on the track. 

Bayne's crew chief Matt Puccia decided to keep him on the track and restart in fourth position on the outside lane behind fellow Ford Performance driver Ryan Blaney.  Blaney was called for jumping the restart but that didn't stop Trevor Bayne from having one of his best restarts ever and making it three-wide through the middle and getting around Chase Elliott for the lead.  He and Elliott ran side by side to the stripe where Bayne beat Elliott by 0.005 thousands of a second. 

"That was pretty cool," said Bayne afterwards.  "That takes me back to Texas in 2011 in the XFINITY race when I restarted fourth and pushed Carl out before winning the race.  I was thinking about what I could do and I timed the restart really good there.  In clear air I was alright.  I was a little concerned with dirty air, but I got a run and I went down through the middle.  It was a little sketchy squeezing through that hole but it worked."

Time is running out to #VoteTrevor into the All-Star Race

Only a couple days remain until the voting closes to get Trevor Bayne into the Sprint Cup Series All-Star race!  Trevor is coming off a 10th place finish at Dover and has a lot of support on twitter, so keep putting in your vote for the driver of the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion.

The Sprint Fan Vote closes this Friday, May 20, and fans can once a day until then, votes shared via Facebook or Twitter will count double toward a drivers total.  Click here to make your vote:  http://www.nascar.com/sprintfanvote

Bayne quietly leading Roush Fenway in 2016

Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse seem to have found some
of the chemistry they had back in the Nationwide Series

Going into the Charlotte's All Star break this weekend, Trevor Bayne has been the highest finishing Roush Fenway Racing driver in 4 of the last 6 races this year, scored two top-ten finishes in the last three events and led 34 laps so far this season.  He is the most improved driver at Roush Fenway so far during the 2016 season coming into the break.

Last weekend's 10th place finish was his third top-ten finish which already has broken last season's mark of 2 top-ten finishes.  But here is where the big improvement's are showing up.

When you look at the two big averages on Bayne's record this season they've made a huge turn around this season.

His average start is 16.75 compared to a dismal 27.91 last season, while his average finish is 18.25 compared to 25.80 in 2015 throughout the entire season.  Also there is a big Easter Egg on the DNF statistics for Trevor Bayne this season compared to last season when he had 3 last season,   Also Bayne has finished on the lead lap 8 times so far this season,  while all of last season the 6 team had 13 lead lap finishes.

Bayne could have very easily been
caught up in Sunday's wreck

The one major change is the team's intense persuasive attitude to not give up when they are down in the dirt and to get the car better.  A good example was this past weekend while racing at Dover, Bayne could have very easily been caught up in the huge wreck and finished back in the 20s and 30s, instead they dodged a huge mess and got a top-10 finish but that was not before they got back on the lead lap after losing it early on and getting the car better late in the race.

The team has a different will to succeed this season than they did in 2015 and maybe it has given Trevor Bayne a little more confidence that he needed to race more competitively this season.  On Sunday, Jeff Gordon made a statement for that last few years that he felt that the talent of the Roush Fenway drivers were better than the cars that they were provided and the cars are finally catching up to the drivers.

A lot of fans put the bad finishes the past few years on Bayne and Stenhouse, but when you have cars that are handling terribly each week it is hard to throw hail mary after hail mary at it to get the car right and expect the driver to finish well.  The big problem is, even when Bayne was with the Wood Brothers, many people don't realize this he was racing the same equipment as the Roush Fenway drivers, and its much different than what Ryan Blaney has at WBR now.  So since 2012 probably, Bayne has been dealt a bad deck, and this year he's finally getting a few good cards out of it.

When you aren't fast and unload slow constantly it makes it very hard for the driver and it puts him a predicament.  I feel Trevor now has a lot of the right combinations this season working in his favor, the crew chief, the spotter, the engineers on the team, his crew that makes the pit stop, and the atmosphere within Roush Fenway Racing has changed altogether.  For many years, RFR had a battle among its own teams; where sharing just didn't seem like an option and one team had to better than the other.  Now it seems that team has made it where all the teams are equal and the drivers are on equal equipment and they share information if one is better than the other.

That in itself will go a long way in making the team better.  Bayne is just quietly leading the surge back.