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.