Duo gunning for Roush Fenway’s third Nationwide Championship
CONCORD, N.C. (April 6, 2011) – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Trevor Bayne love to compete. As their new website rickyvstrevor.com shows, they will pretty much take each other on in anything. Still, the two young up and coming drivers clearly understand that their biggest challenge against each other lies on the race track, and at stake could very well be the Nationwide Series championship.
Stenhouse currently leads the Nationwide Series point standings and Bayne, who sits at sixth in the standings, won NASCAR’s biggest race – the Daytona 500 – earlier this season. Despite being close, the two friends – and even closer competitors – each have their sights set on the same goals.
“Our focus is to win the Nationwide Championship,” said Stenhouse, who won the 2010 NNS rookie of the year award last season. “We are off to a great start and that is where my focus is. I’m confident that if we can keep running like we have been, we can be there at the end.”
Both drivers know to win races and a championship, they will have to beat the other to do so and that is just fine.
“We have always been competitive, but it’s been friendly,” said Bayne. “We are very competitive on and off the track, but we are still really good friends.
And what does team owner Jack Roush think of this natural rivalry.
“Jack builds it up,” said Bayne. “He is always saying, ‘when are you going to win a race?’…Well you know you have to beat him to do it!’
“He definitely wants us to beat each other and we do try really hard on the track.”
How intense can the rivalry be?
“We raced really, really hard with each other at California,” said Stenhouse. “Probably a little too hard.
“But we race clean and we trust each other. We do probably need to calm it down a little out there, but we are both really competitive and we are both after the same things out there.”
Stenhouse has four top 10s in five starts this season; Bayne has three. Both are top 10 in the point standings and each has held his own against Sprint Cup drivers in the series.
Earlier this week Stenhouse whipped Bayne badly in a contest of bouncing ping pong balls into a glass and he edged his 20-year-old teammate in a contest requiring the two to pull tissues out of a box.
They will next go at it this weekend on the 1.5-mile oval at Texas Motor Speedway, where the stakes will be much higher, but the competitive drive much the same.
Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 is set for 8:30 p.m. EDT and will be televised live on ESPN2.
Roush Fenway Racing is NASCAR’s largest team operating seven motorsports teams. Four in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series with drivers Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and David Ragan; and three in the Nationwide Series with Edwards, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Trevor Bayne. For more information on any of
the Roush Fenway Racing teams, log onto http://www.roushfenway.com/ www.RoushFenway.com. Become a fan of Roush Fenway Racing on Facebook by going to http://www.facebook.com/roushfenway http://www.facebook.com/roushfenway and follow us on Twitter @roushfenway. For sponsorship inquiries please contact Robin Johnson at 704.720.4645.
