By Nate Ryan, USA TODAY
Instead, it might mark the moment in which the Daytona 500 winner recaptured the zeal that has turned him into a fan favorite at the tender age of 20.
No longer the unheralded kid from Knoxville, Tenn., who drove his pickup to the biggest race of the season, Bayne will enter Sunday's Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway as a threat to win again in the season's first restrictor-plate race since Daytona.
"Trevor Bayne went from a guy who surprised everybody at Daytona to now he's pushing me around as the Daytona 500 champ here at Talladega," Roush Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards said between practices Friday at the 2.66-mile oval. "I think everyone will be looking to him particularly as a guy that they can work with."
That mantle should be easier to shoulder this week for the driver of the venerable No. 21 Ford of Wood Brothers Racing. After surviving a two-month whirlwind of media demands and mediocre results in the wake of becoming the youngest winner of the Great American Race, Bayne was hospitalized Sunday after an insect bite caused massive swelling in his left elbow.
After a day of being administered antibiotics and fluids, he was re-energized. At a news conference Tuesday to unveil a new sponsor for this weekend and next month's Sprint All-Star Race, Bayne cracked Spiderman jokes and kidded that the team had dispatched ninjas to the Daytona USA to swap out its Daytona 500-winning Fusion with a replica.
He was as ebullient as in the afterglow of his season-opening triumph at Daytona when his smile never seemed to fade as he was paraded around the country on a tour of national talk shows and major media markets.
"We haven't stopped yet," Bayne said. "I think this week just sleeping a little bit was nice. I know everyone thought it was a bad thing (to be in the hospital), but it was good to get the sleep. We've been busy the last two months really. I've been keeping Donnie busy and the body shop with the right sides a little bit."
In the six races since Daytona, Bayne hasn't qualified or finished in the top 15. He crashed twice at Phoenix and got knocked around at Bristol and Martinsville as most young drivers do — and as Bayne had expected he would during his introduction to NASCAR's premier series.
"Somebody asked me how the roller-coaster ride was, and I said, 'Well, we never bought a ticket for it because this is kind of what we expected,'" he said. "Maybe not all the bad finishes, but we expected to struggle just a little bit because it's our first year working together. We never expected to win the Daytona 500 and that was just unbelievable, and I think we could have some more of that this year.
"There's a lot of drive in this team to do better every weekend, and I think we're going to do that."
Team co-owner Eddie Wood also thought the hospital stay had reinvigorated his driver.
"He's been running pretty hard," Wood said. "Had a lot to do and a lot of things on his mind to deal with. Just winning the race and everything after that would be hard on anyone. He's handled it well. He's been to every appearance and hasn't turned anyone down."
Before the Martinsville race two weeks ago, the Wood Brothers held an autograph signing in their original base of Stuart, a tiny hamlet nestled among the mountains of southwest Virginia. Bayne was supposed to appear from 7-9 p.m. He stayed until 12:30 a.m. when nearly 4,000 fans showed up.
It's that sort of appeal, coupled with prodigious talent, that has Wood hoping to keep Bayne in his car full time next year.
"This kid needs to race full time," Wood said. "He is under contract with Jack (Roush) for next year, year after and year after. We have to wait and see what happens over there. I hope it works out to where he could stay with us from now on, but if it doesn't work out that way, it's not supposed to. This whole thing is bigger than us. I'm not sure what it's all about. Things happen that you don't know how it happened, but it's all good. Hopefully, it'll keep on coming."
Wood is confident the magic could continue at Talladega, where the team has brought a Ford that performed well in a December tire test at Daytona ("it's possibly faster than the one (that won Daytona)," says Bayne).
Bayne also is coming off a 17th last week at Texas Motor Speedway that was his best since Daytona — and could have been better, according to crew chief Donnie Wingo.
"We were one adjustment from a top 10 finish, Wingo said. "We tried to keep it up with and had one bad run to get a lap down. Each week we have a shot to finish top 10 or top five with the right circumstances."
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