Trevor Bayne, a race car driver and 2011 winner of the Daytona 500, made headlines over the weekend, not for his fifth-place finish in Las Vegas, but for suddenly fainting during a post-race interview on Saturday.
The 31-year-old Bayne has not been racing in recent years, but after his hiatus, he is driving again and racing a limited schedule this season, Sportscasting reported.
After taking fifth in the Xfinity race in Las Vegas on Saturday, Bayne was having a post-race interview with NBC’s Parker Kligerman when suddenly he fainted and collapsed.
Bayne ended up being all right. He got back on his feet and did a second take of the interview, where he described what happened when he fainted.
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“I’m ok. We were talking and at the end of my talking I started feeling out of breath, and I was like, ‘Parker, I’m going to get too close here and I’m going to pass out.’ When I got out of the car, my left ear was ringing. I knocked the crush panels out so I don’t know if I just got gassed. All I can say is I guess I was trying as hard as I could,” Bayne told Kligerman.
Bayne then explained further to Bob Pockrass, a NASCAR reporter for Fox Sports, how he felt when he fainted and what happened.
“I feel ok. When I got out of the car I felt like I needed to sit down. Like the last ten laps of that race, I knocked the crush panels out of the right side, I probably didn’t drink enough the whole weekend out here. It’s so dry, you don’t realize when you’re not keeping up with hydration. So, I was coming out of the car, then Parker came right over, I’m doing an interview. I talked a lot,” Bayne told Pockrass.
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“So next thing you know, I was out of breath and woke up on the ground. So, I’ve never passed out in my life, that was probably the weirdest experience I’ve ever had,” he said.
Bayne said that he got checked out at the care center at the track and the medical staff there thought he was probably just dehydrated and winded.
“You know when you get out of the car and you’re winded and you got to stand up all of sudden and you’re talking…that’s the best explanation I can give,” he added.
Trevor Bayne describes why he fainted on pit road after the race and how he was feeling after being released from care center as well as his reaction to the penalty during the race. FYI, he was drinking an orange drink in case you see an orange tongue. pic.twitter.com/crngBYmsba
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) October 15, 2022
On Saturday, Bayne had an impressive fifth-place finish in Las Vegas, despite being put at the back during the race for a safety violation after one of his pit crew members fell over the wall, Sportscasting reported.
It was his fifth top-five of the year, Sportscasting added.
Bayne’s re-emergence in racing comes after a few years of some medical complications that arose after his 2011 win at the Daytona 500 at age 20.
He was hospitalized that year for a spider bite and missed five weeks of racing. Two years later, he said he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but recently said he has not experienced any symptoms, which has led him to suggest that perhaps he was misdiagnosed, Sportscasting reported.
Now he has returned to racing, albeit on a limited schedule.
