Fryer's Five: Bayne better off racing for N'wide title

So Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500, and life as he knew it as the aw-shucks kid from Tennessee has been turned upside down. He's a celebrity now, or at least a lot more well-known than he was before Sunday, and suddenly he's facing some career-changing decisions.

Or is he?

There was a big push immediately after the race to figure out if Bayne could change his mind and race for the Sprint Cup title this season. Remember, the new NASCAR rules forced drivers to pick just one series to collect points, and the 20-year-old Roush Fenway Racing driver picked the lower-level Nationwide Series.

But his Daytona 500 victory could potentially be enough to qualify him for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. The final two spots will now go to race winners not already eligible, and one win could be all it takes to grab one of those coveted berths.

The caveat, though, is that Bayne would have to be ranked inside the top 20 in points to be eligible. Because he didn't collect any points on Sunday, he's currently in a tie for 39th in the standings with zero points.

OK, so it's only three points behind Kevin Harvick, but few doubt Harvick won't climb out of that hole.

Bayne? I think we're awfully optimistic in assuming he's suddenly a Chase contender.

Sure, he was stout all of Speedweeks. He had a fast car and he showed he wasn't afraid to run with the big boys. But superspeedway races are a crapshoot, and there are 32 events to go which are entirely different animals.

With a whopping two Sprint Cup starts under his belt, Bayne isn't going to suddenly reel off a string of top-10 finishes. He simply doesn't have the experience at that level to do so just yet.

And let's not forget, he's not driving the No. 21 Ford of David Pearson's days.

Bayne's victory was just the fourth in 20 years for the Wood Brothers and the first since 2001. The team hasn't run a full schedule since 2006 and had planned for only 17 races this year.

Bayne's win could bring in the sponsorship money needed to get that car to every event, but the team is a long way from competing for wins every week – something Bayne himself acknowledged in cautioning people to keep "expectations realistic here."

"We won this race and that sets the bar high, but if we would have finished 15th, we would have been happy," Bayne said. "We've got to remember that for the rest of the season. If we don't go to Phoenix and win, and finish top 15, we still have to remember to be excited about that because we're still learning.

"There are going to be a lot of times when we do struggle because I'm new at this. A lot of new pieces have come together, so I think we've got to keep that realistic and just race right now."

Crew chief Donnie Wingo says the Wood Brothers have made progress with help from Roush and Ford, and that the team goes to the track confident about its potential.

"I think the expectations are high but I think we kind of try to set our standards high," Wingo said. "We expect to go run good. I feel like we've got just as good a cars as anybody running. Coming off a win like this, the momentum can carry you so far but you still have to perform. The pit crew has to perform, the guys putting the cars together have to perform, and we've still got to do our jobs.

"And the little driver here has got to perform."

There's no doubt Bayne is going to have some good runs over the course of the season, whether he runs 17 Cup races or the schedule gets expanded in the wake of his 500 win. But making the Nationwide championship (where he's fifth in the standings) his top priority is the best bet for Bayne. It's a realistic goal, even if his Roush car is so far unsponsored.

Winning that title could be what ultimately brings Bayne the opportunities which will carry him far into the future.

1. What version of Tony Stewart will show up in Phoenix?

The two-time Series champion has gone underground since Sunday night, when yet another Daytona 500 slipped out of his reach. This one might be the most difficult to swallow, as Stewart was lined up next to Bayne on the front row for the final restart.

Anyone who knows anything about Stewart figured he'd plow his way past Bayne, hold off the field and finally win the race that's eluded him so many times. It didn't even come close to happening.

The restart was terrible for Stewart, who had no immediate drafting partner, had to back up to grab Mark Martin, and fell way off Bayne's pace. Stewart not only failed to win; he finished a distant 13th to drop to 0-for-13 in the Daytona 500.

There's been no word out of Stewart since, and a spokesman said he left the track and drove back home to Indianapolis in a Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Big Dooley Crew Cab.

That's exactly what he did in 2002 when he dominated everything all of Speedweeks, only to sustain a blown engine on the second lap of the 500 – a race many believed he was going to win. Stewart instead finished last and left Daytona last in the points, only to rally to win his first Cup championship.

Since 2002, he's been right to believe there'd be another chance to win a Daytona 500. But each opportunity has slipped away.

He pushed Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the win in 2004; was again the dominant car in 2007 until he was wrecked while leading; had victory snatched away by Ryan Newman's last-lap pass in 2008; and now has Sunday's loss to an inexperienced 20-year-old.

It took Dale Earnhardt 20 years to win NASCAR's biggest race, and Stewart may very well be destined for a similar fate. His mood had been wonderful in every NASCAR appearance since January testing. Now it will be interesting to see if he's able to snap out of his latest Daytona disappointment by the time he gets to Phoenix.

2. David Ragan's season starts now

If Ragan wasn't already on the hot seat, he sure is now that Bayne is breathing down his neck for a Roush Fenway ride.

Ragan, who was the leader on the first attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, could have been the winner of the Daytona 500. But he was black-flagged for failing to maintain his position prior to the restart when he moved from the outside row to the inside before reaching the start/finish line.

"It'll take us a long time to forget this one," said Ragan, who wound up 14th. "The sooner we can win one, the sooner we can forget it. … I was a little bit too greedy."

Ragan doesn't have a lot of time to get over his gaffe.

A Daytona 500 win would have been life-changing. Ragan has another year left on his contract but could need a sponsor because UPS' deal with RFR is up at the end of this season.

Winless in 147 Cup races, Ragan needs to start producing for Roush to justify keeping him in the No. 6 Ford beyond this year. He has just eight career top-five finishes and none since 2008 – the year he finished a career-best 13th in the points.

Ragan may have a lost a lot more than just the race to Bayne on Sunday. He may have also lost his ride.

3. How is Richard Childress Racing going to respond?

All four RCR cars went into the Daytona 500 as contenders to win. At the end, only Paul Menard wound up with even a top-10 finish. (Menard finished ninth.)

Kevin Harvick wound up 42nd after sustaining a blown engine just 22 laps in. Jeff Burton had a similar fate 60 laps later and finished 36th.

"A tough way to start the year, but man, we never blow motors," Harvick said.

Most disappointing? Clint Bowyer, who led 31 laps, was in position to race for the win at the end but instead was caught in an accident and finished 17th.

"What can you say? It was just one of those racing deals," Bowyer said. "We had one of the best cars out there and got caught up in someone else's mess."

It was obviously not the start to the season RCR expected, particularly after owner Richard Childress' bold preseason prediction that one of his drivers will unseat five-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson.

But the RCR cars will bounce back – likely this weekend in Phoenix, where they are always good. And don't worry about the ECR engines: That organization proved it's the best in the business last season, and its reputation speaks for itself. Harvick's last DNF for an engine failure? September 2006, a span of 152 races.

4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a big weekend ahead

Superspeedways don't really count in assessing Earnhardt because everybody knows he's going to do well at Daytona and Talladega. Now he's got to show what he and new crew chief Steve Letarte can do somewhere else.

Based on the 500, there should be solid expectations that this could be the turnaround year for NASCAR's most popular driver. I've said for three years now that confidence – his, of course, being shattered – has been the reason for his underwhelming performance.

Team owner Rick Hendrick believes strongly that Letarte is the guy who can rebuild that for Earnhardt, and the 500 was an encouraging sign of what Letarte can do. He was assertive and in control on the radio, not letting Earnhardt fall off the rails during on-track setbacks.

Prodding and prying information about the car and what Earnhardt needs this weekend is going to be Letarte's biggest challenge, but through one weekend, he sounded up to the task.

5. Fox is on a roll after the Daytona 500

The network really needs a quality broadcast this Sunday to continue the ratings boost from the Daytona 500. The problem is, the network is still leaving fans feeling empty by offering an abbreviated postrace show.

It makes zero sense to tune in for four hours and get so little payoff at the end. It's one of the top complaints I hear from rabid fans who are just dying for some reaction from their favorite drivers.

Fox Sports chairman David Hill doesn't subscribe to the need for a lengthy postrace segment, and try as I might, I can't seem to convince him that fans are starving for this coverage. Hill told me last month that postrace is "what Speed Channel is for" – but that's a pretty ignorant statement. Not everybody gets that channel, and even if they do, the network went almost two hours Sunday before picking up postrace NASCAR coverage.

Fans already have too many criticisms of the television coverage, and this is a fairly easy one for Fox to fix. Just stay on the air 10 more minutes and give viewers the raw emotion they desire.

Should Fox continue to come up empty in this area, I suspect they'll see little progress in improving their ratings.