Five Years Too Long: Bayne looks to break the streak in 2016

It seems like it was only a couple of years ago when I heard him scream through the radio at Donnie Wingo "Am I dreaming?"  However it has been five years since Trevor Bayne took the checkered flag in the 2011 Daytona 500 and became the youngest winner of the Great American Race.

Trevor Bayne's looking to end the five year drought in 2016

"The crazy thing is when I'm talking about it, I feel like it was a couple years ago," Bayne said during Media Day at Charlotte.  "Then someone says five years and it kind of blows your mind a little bit.  Makes us all feel old, a little bit.  I still reminder it and think about how great it was."

Bayne's on track success since then has not been the best.  He struggled to get sponsorship on his NASCAR Xfinity Series car in 2012, and only found victory lane twice in the lower division of NASCAR.  It took almost 3 years for Roush Fenway to find the right sponsorship deal for Trevor Bayne to make the big move to the Sprint Cup Series last year.  AdvoCare joined them in 2014 in the Xfinity Series and in May of 2014 announced that they would be making the

move to the Sprint Cup Series with Bayne in 2015.

Bayne feels he and and his team can still perform with the changes that were made in the off-season.

"Like I said [winning the Daytona 500] was great," he stated.  "We want to be great still and go get another one."

This season he will be get another shot with a new crew chief on his box.  Matt Puccia will take over for Bob Osborne who has made a move to Front Row Motorsports to work with Chris Buescher.

"I look forward to going and proving that we can still do it," Bayne said.  "I think I have a lot to prove.  I think our team has a lot to prove.  And we go at it with that mindset."

Bayne was asked about the crew chief changes that were made so late into the season and felt that new crew chief Matt Puccia was right for him.

"A crew chief change can make a difference for you that is for sure," Bayne said.  "But it's going to take more than one person to make it work, it's the whole organization of having cars and take and make better.  But I think where the crew chief change makes a big difference is being on the same page as one another; understanding how to read each other, communicate, whether it's changes in the race or practice; you can only do so much, but there's a lot of options on things to change.  I think Matt and I are already communicate well already.

Bayne was asked what went into making the crew chief change this late into the off-season before the season started.

"There's a lot of parts and pieces," said Bayne.  "But a big portion of it was Scott Graves departure to Gibbs, they had to find a crew chief for Chris Buescher.  Roush is big on keeping people in house and promoting within and Bob was doing my deal and Chris needed a crew chief and they felt like their personalities really lined up well and Matt and I really lined up well and as we know in this sport that is the most key part is communication.  Anyone can go buy the right parts and pieces if they know what they're going to buy and then you have to talk to one another to figure that out and so Matt and I really line up on that well.

During the 2015 one of the key problems I noticed was the chemistry between Bayne and Osborne just didn't hit off.  Bayne would ask for a change in the race car and Osborne would tell him to just deal with it.  I have not heard how Matt Puccia handles making changes to the cars during a race but I would hope that the way Trevor Bayne is talking their chemistry is already better than what Bayne and Osborne had in 2015.