The 2011 Daytona 500, the 53rd running of the event, was held on February 20, 2011 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida as the first race of the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Trevor Bayne, driving for Wood Brothers Racing, won the race becoming the youngest Daytona 500 winner. Carl Edwards finished second, while David Gilliland, Bobby Labonte, and Kurt Busch rounded out the Top 5. Bayne had taken the lead shortly before the final restart and maintained it to win his first Cup Series race and Wood Brothers' fifth Daytona 500. During the race there were 16 caution periods. There were 74 lead changes among 22 different drivers. Following the race, Edwards led the Drivers' Championship with 42 points, one ahead of Gilliland and Labonte. Ford led the Manufacturers' Championship with nine points, three ahead of Toyota and five ahead of Dodge. A total of 182,000 people attended the race, while 15.6 million watched it on television. Report Background Daytona International Speedway is one of six superspeedways to hold NASCAR races, the others being Michigan International Speedway, Auto Club Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Pocono Raceway and Talladega Superspeedway. The layout which is used for the Daytona 500 is a four-turn superspeedway that is long. The track's turns are banked at 31 degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at 18 degrees. Jamie McMurray was the defending race winner. For the race, NASCAR held several test sessions on January 20–22, 2011 for teams to test the newer pavement at Daytona. Also in the sessions, the opening of the restrictor plate was reduced from the plate used in tire testing to . NASCAR vice president for competition Robin Pemberton stated, "We'll have to get back and talk to the teams and look at the speeds from the last two days of testing. I think we have some high-water marks at 197-and-a-half [miles per hour (318 km/h)] which, depending on where they pulled up in the draft, it may be a little quick, but it's hard to say." Every test session began in the morning at 09:00 local time (UTC-05:00), was paused for lunch from 12:00 – 13:00 local time (UTC-05:00), and concluded in the evening at 17:00 local time (UTC-05:00). During the first session on the morning of January 20, 2011, thirty-three drivers participated, and Clint Bowyer was quickest with a speed of