One of the Sprint Cup’s oldest teams came to the Daytona 500 anxiously looking for enough sponsorship to run the entire 2011 season with the sport’s youngest driver. The Wood Brothers, now in a second generation of leadership, and driver Trevor Bayne left the Daytona 500 in a state of euphria with the trophy in hand after surviving the new crash-happy era of two-car tandem racing on the high banks in Florida.

The first race on Daytona’s newly paved track produced a record number of lead changes and caution flags as well as the surprise winner. In just his second Sprint Cup Series start Bayne, who turned 20 the day before, spent most of the 208 laps as the “pusher,” or the trailing car. An improbable series of events, including two attempts at a green-white-checkered finish, left Bayne in the lead on the final re-start after many of the top contenders had been waylaid by damage. Bayne thwarted a charge by Carl Edwards coming off the final corner, jumping in front of the two-car tandem including David Gilliland to lead a one-two-three Ford finish.

 “If I tried to put it into words, I wouldn’t be doing it any justice,” said Bayne, whose short career has been a patchwork of promising deals gone bad due to a lack of sponsorship. But the Knoxville, Tennesse driver’s brief tenure in stock car racing has never been short of promise. After deals with Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Michael Waltrip Racing fell through despite good results on the track, he was signed as a development driver by Roush Fenway Racing in September to run in the Nationwide Series, where last year he had become the first driver since Jeff Gordon in 1992 to win three straight poles on the understudy circuit.

When Eddie and Len Wood, the sons of the founders of the eponymous team, cut a deal to partner with Jack Roush’s team as a satellite operation in the Sprint Cup for 17 races, Bayne, who had never won a race on any of NASCAR’s three major touring series, came along as part of the package. “It hasn’t sunk in yet,” said Eddie Wood, whose team failed to qualify at Daytona in 2008. “We’ve struggled so much in the past couple of years just to make the Daytona 500, much less win it.” In Thursday’s qualifying race, Bayne, succeeded impressively at the new style of racing in two-car packs, which are 10 mph faster than a single car. It was veteran Gordon who made a mistake in the first qualifier and his Chevy got loose coming off Turn 4 with Bayne pushing him on the final lap that led to a wreck. “I was talking to Richard Petty after that about how well he had run in the qualifying race,” said Eddie Wood. “We decided he didn’t know how to race here any other way.”“I don’t want to say I did anything differently than any other rookie, but we were just fast,” said Bayne, who enjoyed success in karting before moving to stock cars. “I can’t think Jeff (Gordon) and those guys enough for putting trust in me. None of us had any experience doing this. So I really had a little bit of an advantage not having to re-learn it all. I got behind (the veterans). I was comfortable pushing.”

Although the victory is considered the first of many to come, the traditional NASCAR ladder system rarely produces such a young driver capable of competing with veterans. Bayne, who is alternately voluble and humble in a manner typical of his age, is talented beyond his years, said Wood. While growing up on the team of his father Glen Wood and uncle Leonard Wood, Eddie was in the family’s pits during Daytona 500 victories by A.J. Foyt, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson.

“Trevor caught on quickly to what everybody else was doing,” said Eddie, referring to the tandems now possible on the ultra-smooth Daytona surface. “Trevor’s got a tremendous awareness in the car. All the great ones are like that. I’ve listened to a lot of drivers over the radio and he reminds me of the great ones.”

One of those great ones, Pearson, was similarly impressed after watching Bayne’s qualifying race. “I talked to him (before the 500),” said Pearson. “I told him to keep his head straight and not to do anything crazy. I told him to stay relaxed. I knew he would because he was relaxed in the qualifier.”

The two-car packs demand not only great car control at 200 mph to remain bumper-to-bumper without crashing, which often requires the lead driver to drag the brake and the trailing driver to be deft on the accelerator. The trailing driver also drives virtually blind and both drivers in “the pod” rely heavily on the spotters who use radio communications while watching from the roof of the Speedway. The trailing driver also has to be sure to breathe his front end occasionally to get air to the front radiator to prevent fatal overheating. Drivers must also switch positions regularly to keep engines cool without losing too much time to the other tandems.

It was the veterans who were guilty of not staying relaxed for much of the race. Michael Waltrip hit two of his partners, including MWR team member David Reutimann, which brought out the race’s “Big One” on lap 29. Defending Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray once spun teammate Juan Pablo Montoya while running in tandem before JPM made a spectacular save. Roush Fenway teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth also collided while running in tandem.

It’s up to NASCAR to maintain a rules package if the teams are to continue to run the tandems on the restrictor plate tracks like Daytona and Talladega, which was re-paved in 2006 and became the origin of tandem racing. Gordon, who got caught in the crash that damaged 14 cars on lap 29, believes the excitement will continue. “This is what we’re going to see here,” he said of the early shoving and spinning. “It is new for all of us. First time with 43 cars in this type of situation. It is going to be a learning situation for all of the drivers.”

After the Budweiser Shootout the week before resulted in average lap speeds of 206 mph in the first race with teams using the two-car packs, NASCAR reduced the size of the front grill openings and made other changes to force the two cars in “the pods” to swap places more often, reducing the build-up of speed, which tends to work like a head of steam.

On Sunday, the Ford FR9, which has consistently been presented as an outstanding design to keep engines cool, prevailed. The Chevy engines of Earnhardt Childress, on the other hand, failed to handle the demands of the tandems as effectively. Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton of Richard Childress Racing fell out before the halfway mark with blown engines. After a valiant effort by Montoya and McMurray to remain “pod partners” throughout the race, the Ganassi duo, which also uses ECR engines, fell back with 20 laps to go when McMurray dropped a cylinder. Together Montoya and McMurray had led 16 laps.

Between engine failures and crashes, many of the usual contenders were eliminated. The big crash on lap 29 also heavily damaged Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin, leaving Dale Earnhardt Jr. with no two-car pack partner from his team. Earnhardt Jr. eventually led nine laps, but was taken out on the final caution which brought out the second green-white-checkered attempt. “I tried to miss the wreck,” he said, “but I may have caused a couple of wrecks myself.”

The previous multi-car incident that brought out the first green-white-checkered eliminated contenders Clint Bowyer and Ryan Newman, leaving Roush Fenway’s David Ragan as the leader after Bayne had pushed him into the lead. In his haste to get back in front of Bayne on the re-start, Ragan changed lanes before the start-finish and was black-flagged by NASCAR as the final crash occurred. That put Bayne at the front for the final re-start.

“He came over the radio and asked what does he do now?” said Wood Brothers crew chief Donnie Wingo. “I told him the best thing to do was line up with whoever is behind him and hopefully we get enough push and they can lock up and be in front. We were lucky to have Bobby Labonte there.”

The tandem of Bayne and Labonte broke free. Behind them, the partnerships of Edwards/Gilliland and Kurt Busch/Montoya were in hot pursuit and caught up in Turn 3 with the checkers ready to wave. “I went to the middle and should have gone to the low side,” said Busch, whose Penske Racing Dodge lost enough momentum to let Edwards and Gilliland steam past on the lower grove.

Out of Turn 4, the Edwards/Gilliland locamotive had the momentum — until Bayne dropped down a lane to cut them off. “I realized that once I lost my momentum behind Trevor I wasn’t going to win,” said Edwards. “If we had gone to the high side I think we could have gone around them if we didn’t get broken up. But then I think Gilliland would have been able to go by me. I was pretty much in trouble (after Bayne’s move) no matter what.”

It was Edwards who made a phone call to Bayne last fall and encouraged him to sign with the Roush team. Over the winter, Bayne again consulted Edwards about running a partial Cup schedule with the Wood Brothers for 17 races under Motorcraft sponsorship.

“He was a little nervous about it and I said, “Look, just go out and run great and you won’t be a partial Cup driver.” Although more sponsorship has yet to formally materialize, those words look prophetic after Bayne blocked Edwards’ bid to win and brought the Wood Brothers back to victory lane at Daytona for the first time since Pearson beat Petty in a final lap showdown in 1976.