Trevor Bayne making a return to the driver's seat in Xfinity Series

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

Trevor Bayne doesn’t have any idea if he could parlay a new, part-time racing opportunity into a full-time one.

He has learned that a race car driver can’t do too much planning.

He didn’t plan to win the Daytona 500 in his second career Cup race in 2011. He didn’t plan to miss races because of excessive fatigue that was initially thought to be the result of a spider bite but eventually led to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. He also didn’t plan to struggle at Roush Fenway Racing once he started competing in Cup full-time in 2015.

So Bayne, who turns 31 next week, looks at a seven-race deal with Joe Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity Series as a chance to go win seven races. Beyond that, the future remains a mystery for the driver, who also serves as a FOX Sports analyst for NASCAR Race Hub and NASCAR RaceDay shows prior to Camping World Truck Series events.

"I don't really have a goal of full-time next year or anything like that," Bayne said. "My goal is to go win — I'm not going to say seven out of seven races — but if we could win three to five or six of these things, that would be amazing, you know?"

It certainly would be amazing for Bayne, who found himself out of a ride after the 2018 Cup season and out of racing with three wins (one Cup, two in Xfinity) in 339 starts across NASCAR’s top two series. He drove in eight truck races in 2020 for Niece Motorsports, with one top-five and two top-10 finishes.

With sponsor Devotion Nutrition, Bayne now hopes that by going to one of the top teams in the Xfinity Series, he can achieve more racing success. His seven races: Auto Club Speedway (California), Phoenix-April, Charlotte-May, Nashville, New Hampshire, Las Vegas-October and Homestead. Jason Ratcliff will be the crew chief for the JGR No. 18 car.

Bayne admits that he has tried to push his life as a race car driver aside — he owns coffee shops in Tennessee in addition to his television work — but never felt content about his career. Although he pursued other rides after Roush Fenway didn’t renew his deal, he couldn’t find a sponsor or a team.

"It's hard to want to do something and not be able to, so I just kind of killed that desire a little bit inside of me," he said. "But it just kept popping up and popping up. ... This is like a shocking story.

"Because three years later, how does Trevor Bayne end up in the Joe Gibbs camp when I would have died for that opportunity three years ago, when I was running full-time Cup? So to get that opportunity now, it's something I want to make the most of."

Why should anyone think Bayne could be successful? He said his sessions at the Toyota Racing Development simulator have gone well. He also notes that drivers who followed him in the No. 6 car (Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman) did not have measurable success.

For this season, he picked races he was good at — such as his first race at the track in Fontana — among the races that were open. JGR has not yet announced who will drive the other races in the car, and there remains the possibility that Bayne could do more than seven races, depending on sponsorship.

"It’s a shot to go win races, and who knows where it takes us? Whether it furthers my TV deal or whether it furthers the racing side or both," Bayne said. "But ultimately, if I could get back to running as many races as possible and doing TV, that's kind of what I'd love to do all the time."

Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!