Trevor Bayne will not drive the No. 21 Ford in the Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday night.
After two days of medical testing at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Bayne took to the track at Rockingham Speedway on Wednesday, but he didn’t feel quite right, according to sources who attended the test.
Bayne, 20, expected to return to action this weekend in both the NASCAR Sprint Cup event at Charlotte Motor Speedway and Nationwide Series race in Newton, Iowa, on Sunday, but his comeback is temporarily on hold.
“Although we would like for Trevor to be on the track this weekend, we want to make sure that he is fully back to prime condition before he goes out to compete with the best drivers in the world,” Roush Fenway president Steve Newmark said. “ . . . Obviously we would love to have him back out on the track, but we are not prepared to do that until we are sure that he’s 100 percent. His symptoms have improved tremendously, but we’re still not all the way back to where we want to be.”
Neither the Wood Brothers nor Roush Fenway Racing will compete in either race this weekend. The hope is to test Bayne again next week to see if his stamina is where it needs to be to meet the strenuous demands of stock car racing.
“He has been undergoing tests and out of his routine for almost a month now," Newmark said. "With that disruption in his schedule, he has not been able to take part in our daily training activities and he’s going to need a little more time to get acclimated to the strenuous demands of a NASCAR racing schedule.”
Bayne, who won this season’s Daytona 500 in the No. 21 Ford, has been sidelined from his Nationwide Series duties since the Richmond race April 29. The Wood Brothers, who are running a partial schedule this season, have been on hiatus since the Sprint Cup tour raced at Talladega Superspeedway on April 17.
“We knew all along that there was not a timetable for his return,” said Eddie Wood, co-owner of Wood Brothers Racing. “We knew it would be a process and we continue to work toward his return. Trevor really wants to be back, and we remain hopeful that we’ll have him competing again soon.”
