Mar. 1, 2010
Las Vegas, Nev. - A great two-tire pit call by crew chief Jerry Baxter and impressive driving skills by rookie Trevor Bayne equaled a career-best NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) finish of sixth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday.
Bayne qualified the No. 99 Aaron's Dream Machine in the 18th spot, but quickly worked his way into the top 15. The Tennesse native remained in and around the top 15 until Baxter called for a two-tire stop with just over 50 laps remaining in the Sam's Town 300. The call gave the Diamond-Waltrip team great track position. The young phenom was able to remain in the top seven over the last 50 laps and passed Justin Allgaier for sixth with four laps to go. The sixth-place finish helped the No. 99 Aaron's Toyota move 11 spots to 13th in the NNS championship point standings.
After the race, Bayne was excited to score his highest finish in the Nationwide Series. "It's pretty awesome, man. I'm pumped up. Good deal -- good momentum for this team. We said we want to get better every week and we've done that, so far. And if we continue to do that every week we'll be in victory lane before too long," said Bayne.
"Before we get ahead of ourselves, we just got to race every weekend," he continued. "We got to go to the next track and be prepared. We gained a lot in our Monday morning meeting last week and we have to do the same this week. Just keep getting better and better and better. These crew guys are awesome. Pit road was unbelievable -- right there with all the best of the best. I couldn't ask for anything better. Jerry Baxter (crew chief) is doing a great job of adapting to my style of driving. It's hard when you have five different drivers like last year. This year, we have one driver and one team."
When asked about the final pit stop, Bayne explained the importance of track position. "I think track position was a big thing. We took two tires and that got us in track position so we could hold them off -- because when you're back about 10th you can't make any position on those top-10 cars. That was a big step in our race to get us up in track position."
The next time Trevor Bayne will slide behind the wheel of the No. 99 Aaron's Dream Machine will be at Phoenix International Raceway on April 9th.
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