The 19-year-old from Knoxville, Tenn., is in his first full season in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series with Diamond-Waltrip Racing and is already making a lasting impression.

He has won the pole for past three series races – a feat last accomplished 18 years ago – and has three consecutive top-five finishes to go with it.

Bayne is now eighth in the series standings and has led 95 laps in his last three races after leading a total of zero in the first 18.

Last Saturday night at Iowa Speedway, Bayne spent numerous laps battling side-by-side with two former Nationwide Series champions – Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick – before settling for a fifth-place finish.

“I learned so much from following Kyle. He deserves every bit of the credit he gets. He’s in great equipment, has a great crew chief (Jason Ratcliff) and he’s an unbelievable driver,” Bayne said of Busch.

“That first 50 laps he was sideways the whole time, and I followed him up and learned that top groove, how to get the car straight to run off of the corner and get a good drive.”

Learning from others is nothing new for Bayne.

He showed from the start of the season that he had speed, but he struggled in several early-season races learning how to race his competitors on the track.
 

“Some people mature at different rates, and he’s been sort of forced to mature quicker than most. The only way to learn how to beat the top guys is to race with those top guys,” said Ty Norris, vice president and general manager for Michael Waltrip Racing.

“Trevor has been qualifying up front, which puts him with a different group. When you race against the Cup guys, you tend to learn a lot more a lot quicker.”

To help Bayne make his adjustment easier, he and his team sought out some help from two of the Nationwide Series most respected former champions – Harvick and Johnny Benson.

“I started talking with Kevin Harvick in Dover. His main point to me was to finish races and not always try and get top five or top-10s when we have a car that’s not good enough,” Bayne said. “He told me that I really need to work on taking what the car will give me.

“I feel like the last seven races or so we have really worked on that. For us to be able to get the top-fives the past few weeks we had to finish the race.”

Last week, the team decided to get a more permanent mentor and brought on Benson to work with Bayne.

“He has so much knowledge of the sport. I have been calling him ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ because he thinks about things you wouldn’t normally think about as a driver,” Bayne said of Benson.

“I think long term he is going to be a great driver coach.”

Now that Bayne has found consistency on the track, Norris thinks it’s only a matter of time before he takes the next step to Victory Lane.

“It’s really been fun to watch him gain confidence,” Norris said. “But it’s also been good to see him gain the confidence of the other drivers.

“Two months ago, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch and (Brad) Keselowski wouldn’t race Trevor the same way because he was having too many issues finishing events.”

If Bayne continues to progress and the team is able to continue to find sponsorship necessary to compete, he has a path to a long NASCAR career.

Bayne signed a five-year contract with MWR with plans to run full-time in Nationwide again in 2011 and with a target date for a move to the Sprint Cup Series in 2012.

“So many sponsors are nervous about rookies so a lot of what we can do with Trevor has do with what we can do with sponsorship,” Norris said.

“It’s hard sometimes to get companies to go with young men like Trevor because they are still unknown and unproven. The great thing about Trevor is he is already getting a body of work and you have to believe we can find some companies interested in young talent.”