Good Cars, Good Crew Chief have Bayne back in the game

Trevor Bayne walks through the garage a little
more confident these days

Trevor Bayne walks through the garage area, a smile on his face, a little more perk in his step these days and there is a good reason why.  In the last few weeks things have really began to come together on the track for Bayne and the results are beginning to show with two top-ten results and a top-five in the last four races, along with leading more laps than he ever had before in his career.

In the off-season Roush Fenway Racing made some major personnel changes to its organization and also mixed up its lineup with the crew chiefs.  After a struggling season with crew chief Bob Osborne in 2015, RFR put Osborne with Chris Buescher at Front Row Motorsports and slid Matt Puccia in as the crew chief of the No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion with Bayne.  Throw in the fact that since 2012, Bayne had been missing something else as well, and the results have began to get better each weekend:  GOOD CARS.

"It is so refreshing to come to the race track and have a chance," Bayne said after finishing 10th Sunday.  "I feel really good about the pieces they are giving me.  It is all about the race cars.  I'm surely proud of this team."

Bayne's confidence has been at an all-time high as of late.  He has been able to keep himself on the lead lap, out of trouble and been able to contend for good finishes on all kinds of tracks this season and as crew chief Matt Puccia said on Sunday the team has to keep pressing forward.

"The car was really strong, but this place is all about patience," Puccia said.  "Even though you have a fast car, you can't do it by yourself.  You step out of line and get yourself in trouble real fast.  He did a really good job staying patient, staying in line.  It just didn't work out for us.

"But people have been talking about us all year long.  We've had speed everywhere we've gone.  That's what we've got to carry on.  We've to keep progressing and moving the needle.  That's what we're doing every week, and it's starting to show.  It's a morale booster seeing how we ran today."

Earlier in the week Bayne did a podcast and stated that one of the key factors was he was getting much better race cars since the beginning of the season.  Something he said he hadn't had since about the 2011 season. You can't have good results with cars that are handling terribly every weekend and you are seeing the signs of that each week as this team is getting better and better.