Article by Brody Jones
Going into the first race of the season, there were a lot of questions. How would the drivers fare on the brand spanking new Daytona pavement? Would Dale Jr. finally break his nearly three-year victory drought? Would Jimmie Johnson win a 6th straight championship? Would Danica Patrick ever give this reporter the time of day? (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?) Everyone was hoping for the Cinderella glass slipper to fit Dale Jr.’s foot, but in the end… it was a Knoxville, Tennessee native named Trevor Bayne who had just turned 20 the day before the race and only had one prior Sprint Cup start bringing the famous Wood Brothers #21 (complete with the awesome retro paint scheme) back to victory lane for the first time since 2001 at Bristol.
The race’s first caution came out when NASCAR’s resident cry-baby Kyle Busch was spun out by Michael Waltrip (who, thankfully, did not race in his God-awful Elvis suit from the NAPA Know-How commercial.). On Lap 29 saw the infamous restrictor-plate “Big One” with such front-runners as Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and several others collected in a 17-car wreck. Another storyline that thickened the plot during the day was pre-race favorites Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton blowing engines. Other contenders taken out in accidents were Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle (or “The Bug-Eyed Dummy” as Sterling Marlin would call him), and Brad Keselowski among others.
In the closing stages, there was another “Big One” on lap 197 that collected a number of contenders for the win. On the first green-white-checkered attempt, we saw David Ragan, who was leading the race, pull the biggest blunder this side of Bill Buckner (dated reference #1 of this article) by pulling out of line too fast on the restart and on that restart attempt, Robby Gordon got loose, saved his car, and tagged Dale Earnhardt Jr., sending him into the wall and extending his drought. Also collected in the accident were Denny
Hamlin and surprise front-runner Regan Smith. This gave Knoxville’s Trevor Bayne the lead with two laps to go, and it was safe to say every racing fan in the Volunteer state was glued to their radios or television sets to see if the local boy could pull off the miracle.
Bayne held off a hard-charging Carl Edwards and David Gilliland in the closing stages to hang on for the unbelievable win and officially becoming the biggest thing to come out of Knoxville since Peyton Manning left town. Edwards had to settle for 2nd with Gilliland 3rd, Bobby Labonte 4th, Kurt Busch 5th, Juan Pablo Montoya 6th, Regan Smith rallied to finish 7th despite heavy right-side damage, Kyle Busch 8th, Paul Menard 9th, and Mark Martin 10th. Coming up next week, the Cup Series runs at Phoenix along with the Nationwide and Truck Series and stop by here next week for another NASCAR recap from yours truly.