St. Louis II: Trevor Bayne preview

BAYNE GETS FIRST START IN NO. 16 - Trevor Bayne will be in the No. 16 car for the first and only time this season at Gateway this weekend. Bayne's crew chief and team will remain in tact, but his car number will change. Erik Darnell returns to the No. 16 3M Ford for his final race next weekend at Texas and Colin Braun will finish out the remainder of the season in the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford.

GATEWAY CHASSIS SELECTION - Crew chief Rick Viers has selected RK-346 for this weekend's 5-Hour Energy 250 at Gateway International Raceway. This is the same car teammate Colin Braun drove to a seventh-place finish after starting second at the track earlier in the season.

Bayne, on going to Gateway: "St. Louis is an awesome track for us. I qualified on the pole and finished third there earlier this season. That was my first top-three in the Nationwide Series.

"It's a short track and I really like racing short track racing. It's what I've grown up racing on, and I'm very comfortable there. Both corners are very different, so you have to match the setup with one corner and just hang on in the other. It's a lot of fun there, I enjoy it and I'm looking forward to going back to Gateway this weekend."

Crew chief Rick Viers, on racing in St. Louis with Bayne: "What a great opportunity the No. 16 team has this week. Having Team Wendy as a new sponsor is really an honor and the type of work they are doing is very exciting. In our last race at Gateway, we started second and finished seventh, our best race to date with Colin [Braun]. We are now returning with Trevor, who knocked Colin off the pole and finished third, and we expect him to be very competitive this weekend. We believe we have the tools to put our driver in a position to win."

Viers, on going to practice with the St. Louis Rams: "Getting to attend the St. Louis Rams practice is a really rare opportunity for Trevor and me. Not so much for Trevor because he does things like this a lot, but the fact that both of us get to go together. Some of the real solid relationship and team building comes at times away from the track and race weekend. This trip gives Trevor and I the opportunity to work on that for sure. Not only that, but it will be really cool to see how other professional teams get themselves ready for their game weekends."

-source: rfr