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Sunday, February 20, 2011
Trevor Bayne shocks : This year's Daytona 500 was blanketed with emotion on the 10-year anniversary of the crash here that killed Dale Earnhardt, the iconic NASCAR champion known even to casual fans of stock car racing.
But Trevor Bayne, a Knoxville, Tenn., native who was about to turn 10 years old when Earnhardt died on the last lap of NASCAR's crown-jewel race, marked a different 10-year milepost at Daytona with a shocking upset Sunday.After surviving a spree of crashes that collected many of NASCAR's top drivers, Bayne held off a charging Carl Edwards and David Gilliland to win a wild Daytona 500 for the Wood Brothers — a once-famous team that fell on hard times and hadn't won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race since the year Earnhardt died.
Bayne did so one day after turning 20, becoming the youngest winner in the 53-year history of the Daytona 500 by a wide margin. Jeff Gordon previously held the record, winning the 1997 race at 25.
The win also came in only Bayne's second race in NASCAR's premier series; he mainly competes in its second-tier Nationwide Series.
The Wood Brothers "gave me a rocket ship" of a car, Bayne said, a No. 21 Ford that was painted in the same red, white and gold colors that made the team famous in the 1960s and '70s with such legendary NASCAR drivers as Cale Yarborough and David Pearson.
Pearson, in fact, was the last Wood Brothers driver to win the Daytona 500, in 1976.
"I never expected to be sitting here," Bayne said after celebrating in Victory Lane, which he briefly had trouble finding after crossing the finish line. "I can't thank these guys enough. It's incredible. This will be the best birthday celebration I've ever had."
Read More: Trevor Bayne shocks the field to win the Daytona 500
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