Yes, you are reading the headline right. Trevor Bayne, 20, did indeed win the 2011 Daytona 500. The youngest driver to win the race, surpassing Jeff Gordon, who did it at 25. He had just turned 20 the day before, a teenager no more. Trevor is only scheduled for 17 races this season and right off the bat, Trevor finds himself in Victory Lane in the Cup series before the Nationwide series. This is the first 500 victory for the Wood Brothers since 1976. Trevor wasn’t even born yet. The whole day was full of two-car drafting and wrecks. Two big ones, collecting Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, David Reutimann, Michael Waltrip, and many others. Kevin Harvick, sporting the new sponsor Budweiser, lost his engine only 20 laps in to the 500, his teammate Jeff Burton’s engine expired 73 laps later, giving all the drivers with ECR (Earnhardt Childress Racing) engines something to worry about. The race saw records. Record number cautions, record number lead changes. A true Cinderella story today. No one would have thought that Trevor Bayne would have beat Cup Champions, former 500 winners to win the DAYTONA 500! I didn’t. I knew he could do very well in the sport, but to win the Daytona 500? Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.
Trevor said on twitter: ‘Sayyyy what! I’m blown away at how amazing God’s plan is! 500 winner J can’t believe it!’ Trevor, God is behind you 100% in your life and career. By the way, you are the Daytona 500 CHAMPION! What we saw on pit road after the race kind of reminded me of a day about 13 years ago, when a man named Dale Earnhardt won his first Daytona 500 after 20 years of trying. Seeing all of those crew members standing on pit road, waiting to give Earnhardt a high five or a hand shake. I can tell you that Trevor was trending on twitter for about 4 hours after the race and quite a bit during the race.
“He's just got a tremendous awareness, I guess, in the car” one of the Wood brothers said of Bayne. “The great ones are like that. I've listened to a lot of drivers on the radio. He reminds me of the great ones. He will be a great one. I told somebody the other day that I felt like he just might be the next big deal, and I think he is.”
“The job the kid done today, I mean, you couldn't ask for anything else,” Wingo, a veteran crew chief, said. “There at the end, he hadn't had the lead all day or [gotten] pushed. [But] there at the end he did what he needed to do.”
“If you just watch the way he races, the biggest thing [with] these new guys coming in now, a lot of them can go fast, but they still struggle racing,” Wingo said. “He don't put himself in a bad position. I just think he adapts so well to certain situations. Just the racing part of it, he catches onto the racing part and don't put himself in a bad position. That's the sign of a good racer.”
“He was very calm,” Wood said. “Whoever he was pushing, he was relaying back to our spotter, to their spotter, how he needed it to be done … if he needed to be the guy to drag the brake or come back a little more, and he knew how to go fast.”
“That's what I noticed in him right off the bat. He knows how to do this,” Wood said. “I was talking to Richard Petty earlier in the week. We were talking about how well he did in the qualifiers and how do you do that your first time at doing it.
“We decided that he didn't know how to do it wrong. It's new to him. It's all brand-new. So however he did it was correct. He caught on to the way that everyone else was doing it.
“We were on top of the hauler during the first qualifier. He watched Matt Kenseth pull out to the right. He said, ‘You know, I think I'm going to do that.’ He went right out there and did it.”
“I have no idea other than the fact that we had a fast race car and everybody wants to be hooked up to a fast race car. When we qualified third, it kind of sparked everything. They were like, ‘Wow, maybe we need that 21 car pushing us.” Bayne said when asked how he became the best pusher in the field. “I don't want to say it's anything I did any different than any other rookie. We were just fast. I can't thank Jeff and those guys enough to put the trust in me.
“… All those guys that helped me along the way today, their trust in me showed other people could trust me. Jeff Gordon taking that first step showed everybody that, hey, they could work with me and we're here.”
(more quotes here:
http://www.scenedaily.com/news/articles/sprintcupseries/The_next_big_deal_Trevor_Bayne_fulfills_promise_flashes_star_potential_with_huge_victory_at_Daytona.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)This is a big win for not only rookie Trevor Bayne, but for the Wood Brothers also, this being their 5th Daytona 500 win in their 58 year career in the Cup series. Miss the race? Here’s a quick run down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm7GGnQ7hmUTrevor Bayne interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdzV4-TJRE4Congratulations to Trevor Bayne and the whole Wood Brothers Racing team. You did an extraordinary job today and I am glad that you guys went with Trevor Bayne.
What are your thoughts about the race? Please comment!
TREVOR BAYNE IS THE 2011 DAYTONA 500 CHAMPION!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DESERVE IT!
