BREAKING: 2012 NASCAR HOF Class Announced

And the winners are:

From NASCAR their ownselves...

NASCAR announced today the 2012 class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. The five-person class, which will be officially inducted in a ceremony during the weekend of Jan. 20, 2012 at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C., consists of: Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Inman, Richie Evans and Glen Wood.

Members of the 55-member NASCAR Hall of Fame Voting Panel met today in a closed session in Charlotte, N.C., to vote on the induction class of 2012. The announcement was made by NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France in the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s “Great Hall.”

The class was determined by votes cast by the Voting Panel, which included a nationwide fan vote conducted through NASCAR.COM. The accounting firm of Ernst & Young presided over the tabulation of the votes.

As was the case for the first two classes of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the results of this year’s voting were competitive. Yarborough led with 85 percent of the vote, followed by Waltrip (82%), Inman (78%), Evans (50%) and Wood (44%).

For those of you who don't know... Inman was Richard Petty's crew chief, Evans is NASCAR's King of the Modified Division and Wood is from the Wood Brothers...

Congrats to all the winners selected from the 25-finalist class...

Who is Daytona champ Trevor Bayne and where did he come from?

Your winner/Courtesy: nascar.com

By now you know that he's the guy who won the 2011 Daytona 500. And yeah, it's a crazy story. The kid just turned 20 the day before. It was his second Sprint Cup start. And yeah, he's driving part-time...or was driving part-time for the legendary Wood Brothers, who hadn't had a car win the 500 since before a lot of people reading this were born.

A little more about Trevor Bayne, from the Daytona Beach News-Journal RIGHT HERE

He survived one of the more exciting, fun to watch Daytona races in a long time, holding off Carl Edwards to take the checkered flag in the NASCAR equivalent of double overtime.

Your highlights, from our friends at ESPN:



Bayne has had some success running in the Nationwide circuit, enough success that he got a shot to run with the big boys. He hasn't been around racing long, but, unless he goes the way of Derrick Cope, he'll be around awhile.

To answer our headine question, Bayne was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he still has family. WATE-TV in Knoxville caught up with them on Sunday:



Perhaps the funniest moment of the day was caught on his two-way radio after the race, when upon trying to find Victory Lane, Bayne said "I don't even know where to go". We couldn't find the video clip online, but FOX cameras clearly showed him driving right past it, until a NASCAR official jumped in front of him and made him stop.

Here's an interview with Trevor's mom from FOX Sports: