NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie Trevor Bayne won Sunday’s Daytona 500 holding off a flurry of NASCAR veterans on the second green-white-checkered finish for an impropable win in the sport’s biggest race.
Roush Fenway driver Carl Edwards finished second after making a late push on the final lap, but he couldn’t get around the 20-year-old Bayne on the race’s final turn.
Regan Smith was involved in a wreck in the race’s final laps that set the stage for a green-white-checkered two-lap finish upon that end of that caution. However, during that two-lap sprint to the finish, another big wreck took place, one involving Dale Earnhardt Jr. (who finished 24th) that set up another green-white-checkered finish.
Roush Fenway’s David Ragan began the first green-white-checkered sprint on the first row alongside Bayne, but Ragan was black-flagged for an illegal lane change on the first restart. Instead of a potential 500 win for Roush-Fenway, Ragan finished 14th.
Edwards made a push toward the front on the last half of the final lap, getting a push from David Gilliand, but he couldn’t quite make it all the way to the front.
Bayne gave the Woods Brothers team its first win since 2001, and its first Daytona 500 victory since 1976. The win for Bayne comes a day after he finished 10th in the Nationwide event on his 20th birthday, racing for Roush Fenway.
