The Daytona 500-winning team of Trevor Bayne and the Wood Brothers Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion crew will head back this weekend to one of their bread-and-butter race tracks, the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
For the past several seasons, the Wood Brothers and their No. 21 Ford Fusion have run a limited schedule and focused on the intermediate-length tracks like Las Vegas. It was last fall at one of those tracks, Texas Motor Speedway, where Bayne made his Sprint Cup debut in the No. 21 Ford Fusion.
Team co-owner Eddie Wood said Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400 offers Bayne and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane crew a chance to put behind them the disappointment of a week ago at Phoenix, where Bayne was one of the drivers who crashed out early, and get into the heart of their 2011 schedule.
“This is our first trip back to a mile-and-a-half track like Texas, where we had a good run last fall,” Wood said. “We haven’t raced at Las Vegas in a couple of years, but throughout our history we’ve concentrated on the intermediate tracks. It’s what we’ve been geared up for the past several seasons.”
Crew chief Donnie Wingo and the crew have prepared a brand new Roush-built Ford Fusion for Sunday’s 400-miler, and that gives Wood even more reason for optimism.
“The Roush Fenway Ford Fusions always run well here at Las Vegas,” he said.
And although Bayne has no Sprint Cup experience at Las Vegas, as this is just his fourth career start in NASCAR’s elite division, he did have a strong run in the Nationwide Series race at Vegas last year. He finished sixth, a NASCAR-career best at that point.
Qualifying for the Kobalt Tools 500 is set to begin Friday at 6:40 p.m. Eastern Time, and the race is Sunday at 3 p.m. with TV coverage on FOX.
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