{"id":187877,"date":"2025-08-30T20:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T20:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187877\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T20:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T20:11:11","slug":"trevor-bayne-gets-top-5-in-return-to-nascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/187877\/","title":{"rendered":"Trevor Bayne Gets Top 5 in Return to NASCAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

DARLINGTON, S.C. \u2014 Prior to Saturday\u2019s (Aug. 30) Sober or Slammer 200 at Darlington Raceway, Trevor Bayne<\/a> had not competed in a NASCAR national series race in nearly two years.<\/p>\n

In his return to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on Saturday, Bayne worked his way up from a 16th starting spot, came on strong late and finished fifth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I loved it,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cI\u2019m so thankful for the opportunity that I\u2019ve been helping. Victory Junction allowed me to drive this [No.] 1 truck. Legacy Motor Club, TRICON Garage, it was a joint effort, Toyota. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love being around the Truck Series. I\u2019ve been able to do that with FOX in the broadcast booth, been able to work with all the TRICON Garage drivers this year. Congratulations to Corey [Heim]<\/a> on his win in the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"2025<\/p>\n

Corey Heim Wins Chaotic Sober or Slammer 200 at Darlington Raceway<\/p>\n

Bayne last raced in Trucks and the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2023, with his most recent start prior to Saturday being a 14th at Homestead-Miami Speedway for Rackley W.A.R. In the time since then, he has served as the Driver Optimization Leader for Legacy Motor Club and a driver coach for TRICON Garage, hence why he congratulated Heim. He\u2019s also spent time broadcasting for FOX Sports and Prime Video. It seemed like the driving career of the 2011 Daytona 500 winner may be over and he was onto the next stage of life. Until Wednesday, Aug. 20, that probably was the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast Wednesday, Matt Puccia, my former crew chief, we\u2019ve talked about it for three years, ever since he was at TRICON, like, \u2018I wanna drive a truck,’\u201d Bayne said. \u201cWe stayed in close contact, and he called me and said, \u2018Hey, we may have a truck open for Darlington. Would you wanna do it?\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u2018Heck yeah, let\u2019s do it.\u2019 And so, I was at Daytona on Saturday (Aug. 23), hanging out with the Legacy Motor Club and AdventHealth guys. I mentioned that I might have an opportunity, and they\u2019re like, \u2018We gotta do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

So Bayne was entered in TRICON\u2019s No. 1 entry. And while AdventHealth was unable to put its logos on the truck, it put up money to put Victory Junction \u2014 a camp founded by Kyle Petty<\/a> to\u00a0enrich the lives of children, ages six to 16, with chronic and serious medical conditions \u2014 on the hood instead. <\/p>\n

\u201cReally cool for Kyle and Richard Petty<\/a> as well to have Victory Junction on the truck, but for me, my expectations were pretty low coming into this,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect, never even qualified a truck before. We were in [COVID-19 procedures] when I raced all [my previous Truck] races except for Homestead, and I didn\u2019t get to qualify there. So I learned a lot this weekend. Hopefully, we can apply it going forward for our team.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Bayne returned to a series he loves, even though it is the lone national series he does not have a win in. Despite previously winning in NASCAR\u2019s biggest race, Bayne noted that this Truck race at Darlington was \u201cthe most nervous I\u2019ve ever been coming into a race.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because I didn\u2019t want my young drivers talking smack to me, or if you just never know when your last race is gonna be,\u201d Bayne said.<\/p>\n

The weekend didn\u2019t start well for Bayne. He was 25th quickest in practice and qualified 16th. But Bayne flawlessly worked his way toward the front once the race started. <\/p>\n

\u201cFriday was rocky,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cLike we were not great. The truck was a handful up the hill, but Jake [Hampton, crew chief] and my team got the truck better all day long. We kept moving forward. Pit stops were great. We just executed the race. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think I hit the wall like four or five times, which isn\u2019t bad for me at Darlington. Normally, I have one extra pit stop for a flat tire, and I didn\u2019t have to do that today, so good day overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bayne had climbed into the top 10 by the end of stage two, and in the race\u2019s final green flag run, he got into the top five, where he finished. Despite the strong showing and proving that he still has something left in the tank, Bayne has no further races planned. However, that doesn\u2019t appear to bug him, as he is content in his current roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to keep my expectations low,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cLike until I saw the name go above the door, I even thought this one might go away. So you just try to enjoy every single one, and in racing, it\u2019s always about the next thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou win, it\u2019s always about the next one, and for me right now, it doesn\u2019t have to be that way. Like I get to be around the sport. I get to be around competition. When I do get a chance to drive, it\u2019s so much fun, but I try not to put a lot of expectation on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite Bayne embracing life after a driving career, if someone were to ask him to drive another race, \u201cI will say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very tied in with Toyota, Legacy, TRICON, so that\u2019s kind of where my loyalty is at right now is just making sure I can help Corey [Heim] win a championship,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cHe\u2019s so talented. Like people don\u2019t understand how well he applies things. Tanner [Gray]<\/a> is hard on himself sometimes, very talented. Gio Ruggiero<\/a> is putting in more work than I\u2019ve ever seen a driver put in, so all three of our guys here are are very talented, and they have good work ethics. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo that\u2019s why I enjoy being a part of it. If I get to drive again, great, but working with them is really fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Donate<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Content Director\u00a0at\u00a0Frontstretch<\/p>\n

Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.<\/p>\n

Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DARLINGTON, S.C. \u2014 Prior to Saturday\u2019s (Aug. 30) Sober or Slammer 200 at Darlington Raceway, Trevor Bayne had…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":187878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-187877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115119540610438641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}