Trevor Bayne’s unexpected win in the Daytona 500 shows once again racing is a young mans sport.
As a fan of NASCAR racing the first driver I ever rooted for was LeeRoy Yarbrough in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Through most of the 70’s after LeeRoy dropped out of the NASCAR world with mysterious ailments; I didn’t have an allegiance to any one driver until Bill Elliott came on the scene toward the end of that decade.
Elliott captured my attention because of his family run team out of Georgia when most NASCAR teams had already migrated to the area around Charlotte. At the time there weren’t a lot of teams running Fords and I have always held an affinity for the brand. So Bill, Dan and Ernie were MY guys.
I have remained an Elliott fan throughout his career even when he closed his team and went to drive for Ray Evernham and the resurrected Dodge factory effort.
When it was announce that Bill would drive for the Wood Brothers in a part time effort I believed in my heart, if not totally in my mind, that the combination could bring back the glory of a time gone by when David Pearson took the part time program and won races. Pearson won races; he wasn’t interested in winning championships. Championships were for guys like Richard Petty.
My hope for catching lightening in a bottle with the Wood Brothers-Bill Elliott combination kept lessening with every missed opportunity. The Woods would enter Elliott in places that he had run well in the past; places like Atlanta. The combination never seemed to work. Maybe the team wasn’t ready to win yet.
I was still surprised when the Woods elected to take Bill out of the car in late 2010 to give the displaced Bayne a one-off. Bayne had been released earlier by Michael Walltrip Racing from his Nationwide Series ride. Needless to say he ran well enough at Texas, finishing a respectable seventeenth, to make the Woods have to make a decision for 2011.
The decision to part ways with Elliott and give Bayne the ride for 2011 obviously was a winner for both Bayne and the race team that hasn’t seen a win at Daytona since 1976. One win does not a career make; but to take the iconic #21 to victory lane in only his second Sprint Cup race and just a day after his twenteth birthday could make the Wood Brothers seem like geniuses.
It may be way too early to proclaim a changing of the guard, but for this NASCAR fan it’s time to move on to a new phase in the sport we love.
Photo credit: BethAnne Heisler/ON PIT ROW
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