Trevor Bayne

The Trevor Bayne bandwagon arrived here Friday with the 20-year-old Daytona 500 winner trying to regain his racing bearings after a whirlwind week that included a phone call from Vice President Joe Biden , meeting actress Pamela Anderson and appearing on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show. The response to his upset win has "definitely been way more than I expected," Bayne said Friday ahead of the next NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday.

Carl Edwards came up a few feet short of passing Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and capturing NASCAR's premier race Sunday, but Edwards nonetheless remains on a roll that could lead to his first Cup title. Lurking behind the leaders for much of the race ? mainly to avoid the crashes that took out several of NASCAR's other top drivers ? Edwards and his No. 99 Ford came on like a rocket in the final lap, with a strong push from fellow Ford driver David Gilliland. But despite pulling up to Bayne's rear bumper, Edwards couldn't get around the 20-year-old and had to settle for second place in the season opener of the 36-race NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

This year's Daytona 500 was blanketed with emotion on the 10-year anniversary of the crash here that killed Dale Earnhardt, the iconic NASCAR champion known even to casual fans of stock car racing. But Trevor Bayne, a Knoxville, Tenn., native who was about to turn 10 years old when Earnhardt died on the last lap of NASCAR's crown-jewel race, marked a different 10-year milepost at Daytona with a shocking upset Sunday. After surviving a spree of crashes that collected many of NASCAR's top drivers, Bayne held off a charging Carl Edwards and David Gilliland to win a wild Daytona 500 for the Wood Brothers ?

Despite winning the Daytona 500 and its $1.5 million in prize money in only his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, Trevor Bayne technically isn't a rookie in the series because he's committed to running this year in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series. So Carl Edwards , who finished second to Bayne on Sunday, took the early lead in the Cup championship standings under NASCAR's new points system. Edwards left Daytona with 42 points and a one-point lead over David Gilliland and Bobby Labonte , who finished third and fourth, respectively.