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.