Bayne's top five at Bristol his first since 2011 Daytona 500 victory

Bayne’s fifth-place finish was his first top-five in Sprint Cup Series competition since he won the 2011 Daytona 500 while running a part-time schedule with the Wood Brothers – a span of more than five years. 

We went through a lot of adversity to get there, but we just didn’t give up

Trevor Bayne

Roush Fenway Racing has struggled with performance in recent seasons and Bayne was no exception. The organization has also seen marked improvement this year and Bayne’s performance in the No. 6 Ford has been illustrative of the progress.

“It was a lot of battling back. We went through a lot of adversity to get there, but we just didn’t give up,” Bayne said of Sunday’s run. “We had a really good race car. That’s what paid off.  You can’t come back if you don’t have good race cars and we’ve got that now.”

Bayne improved to 20th in the series standings with his run. That’s the highest he’s ever been as a fulltime competitor in the Cup series.

"Keep pushing the that needle every week"

Better qualifying efforts have been commonplace for all three Roush drivers this season, and Bayne has three top-10 starts in eight races, including starting 10th on Sunday at Bristol.

“Last year, I would have been throwing a party if we were top-10 in qualifying here. The fact that I wasn’t jumping around and acting crazy is that we’re getting immune to running well and that’s a good thing,” he said.

“We keep pushing that needle every week.”

Bayne, 25, was the highest performing Ford driver in Sunday’s race.

“I need to minimize my mistakes going forward, but we were able to make mistakes and get back to a top-five finish,” he said. “I kept getting on the bottom on restarts every time, but it came back to me at the end. We were able to start on the top those last three and that’s really what got us in the top-five.”

The good run was especially important for Bayne, who grew up in Knoxville, Tenn. Success on short tracks has also been elusive for the Roush organization in recent years, so Bayne’s finish was another good sign.

“If there’s somewhere I could choose to run well, it’s Bristol. It’s a tough race track. It’s my home track,” he said. “I had a lot of fans here and it just feels good to be in contention every week.”