By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Each week, Kickin’ The Tires will highlight the 20th-place finisher from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Standing as the middleman in weekends with 40-car fields, there is sure to be a story behind each one.
The opening two races of the year gave us two of the interesting storylines for our 20th-place finishers: the happy and the disappointed. In other words, a team who’s thrilled to come home 20th while the other spent the following week wondering what went wrong.
For Week No. 3 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a third storyline appeared — and it’s one we may see much of in 2018… the expected result.
Trevor Bayne and Roush Fenway Racing came home 20th in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400, the second 1.5-mile race of the season. And as mentioned, the result was nothing to take to the bank for a team who has struggled to post consistently strong intermediate numbers since 2015.
Starting 2018 with a Daytona 500 finish of 13th, Atlanta Motor Speedway ended in a cloud of smoke following a massive engine expiration with 13 laps to go. The incident also damaged teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Before then, the No. 6 Ford ran 25th on average after starting 20th. Sunday at Vegas saw minor improvement over Atlanta, running 22nd on average across 400 miles. The biggest issue Sunday, instead, was handling.
“It was a tough one for us,” Bayne said. “The car was really tight, but I heard everyone had similar issues. We’ll get to work this week and hopefully come out with a better result in Phoenix.”
The best news out of Vegas was reliability. Bayne saw the checkered flag, granted three laps down, in 20th spot while Stenhouse came home 14th after a third straight top-10 qualifying effort.
In regards to what may come this weekend at ISM Raceway in Phoenix, Bayne has not witnessed too many happy days in the desert. In seven prior starts, the fourth-year Roush man has only one top-20 finish, coming in this race one year ago.
List of 20th-Place Finishers So Far in 2018
Daytona: Gray Gaulding
Atlanta: Alex Bowman
Las Vegas: Trevor Bayne