Team: No. 6 Performance Plus Ford Fusion
Crew Chief: Matt Puccia
Twitter: @Tbayne6, @Bayne6Team and @RoushFenway
Fontana – Sunday, March 18 at 3:30pm ET on FOX
ADVANCE NOTES
Bayne at Auto Club Speedway
· Bayne will make his fifth career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) start at Auto Club Speedway this weekend.
· His best finish in the Cup series at ACS came in 2016, a 20th place result after starting seventh.
· Bayne has made 60 starts at two-plus mile speedways in his MENCS career tallying 13 top 10’s and one victory, his first, in the 2011 Daytona 500.
· The Knoxville, Tennessee, native also has experience at Fontana on the NASCAR Xfinity series side, making seven starts with an average finish of 11.3 and three top 10’s, all of which came with Roush Fenway Racing.
Recapping Phoenix
Bayne rolled off the grid 21st in last Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500 at ISM Raceway and brought home a 20th place result. After making some early adjustments in the first stage, Bayne was able to get his No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion as high as 14th to end stage two. However, contact with the No. 22 machine set he and the team back, but they eventually rebounded, picking off a few positions late for a top-20 result.
Matt Puccia at Fontana
Puccia will be atop the pit box for his seventh MENCS race at Fontana on Sunday. Puccia’s best finish at the two-mile oval is sixth twice (2012, 2013) with former Roush Fenway driver Greg Biffle.
QUOTE WORTHY
Bayne on racing at Fontana:
“Fontana is a really cool and fun place to race. We really made some strides last week and we were much more comfortable and confident at Phoenix. This week we hope to continue to improve and build upon that with a solid result at Auto Club Speedway.”
