After Trevor Bayne crossed the start-finish line to win the 2011 Daytona 500, he uttered words that will live forever in the lore of The Great American Race.
“Are you kidding me?” Bayne, just a day removed from his 20th birthday, shouted across his radio. “Am I dreaming right now?”
The victory for the historic Wood Brothers Racing organization was one of the most popular upset stories in NASCAR history.
Eleven years later, Bayne, now 31, says much of the victory lane celebration is a blur, but one moment surrounding the event remains clear. It involves flying to New York the day after the race to do a morning show appearance.
“I’m sitting there on the plane, I’m reading my Bible and I look down and I see the Daytona 500 ring on my finger and I just had this out-of-body, ‘Oh my goodness, what is happening?’ type experience,” Bayne told SPEED SPORT.
“(I thought) ‘That’s the ring Dale Earnhardt wore, Jeff Gordon wore, how am I even here? How am I already wearing this ring in my second-ever Cup start? This can’t be real.’”
Bayne, originally from Knoxville, Tenn., had risen quickly through the ranks.
He made stops as a teenager in the Hooters Pro Cup Series and what is today the ARCA Menards Series East (where he drove primarily for Dale Earnhardt Inc.) before moving into the Xfinity Series in 2009 with Michael Waltrip Racing.
After making his first Cup Series start with the Wood Brothers at the end of 2010, Bayne began competing for the team part time at the Cup Series level in 2011 while running in the Xfinity Series for Roush Fenway Racing.
In 2015, he became the full-time driver of Roush’s flagship No. 6 car in the Cup Series ranks.
Yet, by 2018, a mix of performance and sponsorship issues within the Roush organization relegated Bayne to part-time status and he found himself sharing his ride with Matt Kenseth. For 2019, Roush hired Ryan Newman to drive the car and Bayne was out of the sport.
In 2020, he made eight starts for Niece Motorsports in the Camping World Truck Series, but this year has re-emerged with a schedule of eight Xfinity Series races aboard Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 18 Toyota Supra.
Plus, he’s become a fixture as part of FOX Sports’ NASCAR coverage.
Bayne sees Joe Gibbs Racing as one of the best cultures he’s been around, in large part due to Coach Gibbs’ leadership style and values.
“People just have this respect for him there,” Bayne said. “The tone changes when he walks into the room and people really respect him as their leader.
“And I would say (they have) the fastest race cars I’ve ever gotten the opportunity to drive. This is the coolest part. When we unload at the race track with (crew chief) Jason Ratcliff, I know that I’m going to have a shot. I may not win, but I’m going to have a shot to win on every single weekend we get on the track and there’s nothing more exciting than that.”
Bayne had been in contact for several years with Steve de Souza, who helms Gibbs’ Xfinity program, and expressed his desire to drive for the team should an opportunity arise. Shortly before the 2022 season started, Bayne received a call from Devotion Nutrition and a deal was put together to get Bayne in the No. 18 car with the company’s support.
“They believed in my ability and believed that I could do well if given the right circumstances,” Bayne said.
Bayne would relish the opportunity to race full time and was nowhere near ready to leave the sport after the 2018 season.
“I just wanted to reset, and get away from it, take a breather,” he said. “I didn’t know what that would look like, but three years later I kind of thought I was done. I had come to terms with the fact of who Trevor Bayne was outside of driving race cars.”
He and his wife, Ashton, ultimately opened Mahalo Coffee Roasters, which has grown to three stores in the Knoxville area and also sells its coffee to customers by the bag and wholesale.
When on the road, the couple often found themselves visiting local trendy coffee shops near each NASCAR track and Bayne has always been interested in the product itself.
“We went to Australia and trained with a friend of mine for two weeks on how to operate roasting equipment and coffee shop equipment and how to source coffee from all over the world, so that was another key component,” Bayne said. “Coffee really does have an international impact; we’re buying from a farm in Costa Rica or Ethiopia or Brazil and it gives us a chance to share the impact of community in a sustainable way because we’re buying the product from them.
We’re not giving them a handout; we’re paying them a fair wage for work and it’s boosting their economy. I loved that aspect of it. We just started up with a roaster in the garage and like anything else that I do I kind of go full-on intensity, I take it to the next level.”
The name “Mahalo” is the Hawaiian word for thankfulness, and at one time, Trevor and Ashton Bayne considered moving to the Aloha State. However, after staying there for a month, they decided to return to Knoxville.
In east Tennessee, their four young children, Ellie Kate, Levi, Luka and Jude, will be able to grow up close to their grandparents.
Today, the Bayne family lives on a 78-acre farm. However, the Hawaiian theme permeates throughout the coffee business.
“We want to be thankful for our community, for the opportunities we have and for what the Lord’s done in our life, and so that was a perfect word,” Bayne said. “Our coffee shops have that surf shop feel, they’re really fun to be around. You don’t feel like you have to have your laptop out working, you can, but you can also come in and just have a good time.”
Racing remains where Bayne feels most comfortable though, and he admits to being deeply disappointed with the trajectory of his career.
“I’m thankful that I had the opportunities to make a really good living and run at the Cup level for years,” he said. “But then also it’s frustrating at the same time because when you’re there, you want to win. Now, my perspective is way different and way better.”
With Gibbs, he believes his desire to win is simply a matter of his competitive spirt and not to prove anything, which in turn also makes him a better driver.
Among the other challenges Bayne faced was a series of health battles that eventually led to his being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. But Bayne says it is a common misconception that MS had anything to do with his departure from racing. In fact, in 2017 and ’18 he was training with Aldon Baker, a legendary trainer in the Supercross world.
“I do have those health issues, I do have MS, but with nutrition and fitness and all that I’ve not had to take any treatments,” Bayne said. “I’ve really been able to manage everything very well with no real issues there.”
After leaving the sport, Bayne also built a dirt late model and raced around Tennessee and the Carolinas, but, calling it “a lot of effort for a little bit of fun,” he began to seek other ways to be around the sport.
Having always enjoyed doing television interviews and looking for a way to be part of the racing family he missed so much, he reached out to the team at FOX Sports when Jeff Gordon announced he would be leaving the Cup Series booth after the 2021 season. Bayne hoped there would be a trickle-down effect and an opportunity would be available.
With no TV experience, Bayne was given a trial run calling an ARCA race, and soon he was asked to come back for multiple television projects. This year, he is doing “NASCAR Race Day“ for each Camping World Truck Series event when he doesn’t have a conflict, as well as a variety of “Race Hub” shows and other appearances.
“I really didn’t understand the level of work that the analysts put into a show, or the people in the background put into a show,” Bayne said. “Honestly, it’s been very enjoyable and it’s come naturally. There have been some things I’ve had to work at, but it’s been super fun. I don’t know where it’s headed. I don’t know if there’s a long-term here, but I hope there is and I really enjoy it.”
Bayne, always one of the most humble, polite and well-liked drivers in the garage, has endured his share of challenges and setbacks, but his perspective remains balanced.
He still is bothered by the fact his Daytona win is sometimes seen in his words as a “one-hit wonder,” and wanted desperately to win on another track to prove Daytona wasn’t simply a fluke.
A victory at Texas in the Xfinity Series later in 2011 when he beat Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards showed he could go door to door and win against some of the sport’s very best.
Yet, he is thankful for the opportunities the Daytona 500 presented, and that if it is indeed his only Cup Series win, it’s the sport’s crown jewel. But Bayne has a lot more to do.