Spencer Bayston
Although still relatively young at 24, Spencer Bayston has worked his way up through the ranks of open wheel racing to get himself to the point of being a full-time regular on the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series. An accomplished racer at a very young age, the Lebanon, Indiana driver earned the 2017 USAC National Midget Series championship along with wins in the Belleville Midget Nationals and the 4-Crown Nationals in that same season. He eventually parlayed those efforts into part-time rides at the top level of Sprint Car racing.
Wins in the 2021 Brad Doty Classic at Ohio’s Attica Raceway Park and at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway paved the way for an all out assault on the Outlaws tour in 2022.
Last year, Bayston did in fact achieve the goal of becoming a full-time competitor with the World of Outlaws driving for CJB Motorsports. That led to feature wins at South Dakota’s Huset’s Speedway and on the dirt covered Bristol Motor Speedway where he edged Kyle Larson during a late-race battle. The pilot of the No. 5 machine would ultimately place 8th in the final series standings at the conclusion of the season and earned WoO Rookie of the Year honors.
Now the challenge to is to not only to continue winning races but to show the type of consistency needed to contend for a season-long title. During a recent media availability made possible by the World of Outlaws, the driver who currently sits 8th in the series standings after 13 races discussed the difficulty of maintaining the necessary level of consistency to contend for wins night after night and for a championship.
“It’s tough,” Bayston declared. “Outside of that top four or five or six guys, you can see how tough it is. You’ll see some of us ebb and flow a little bit. You’ll string together a good couple of weeks then things just don’t go well. You don’t always know why but the teams that are able to assess immediately an issue or a flaw and quickly recover from that is why you don’t see some of those top guys fluctuate much. They’re pretty consistent with their finishes.”
Throughout a successful rookie campaign, Bayston realized just how difficult it can be to take on such a grueling schedule. Both the mental and physical demands are hurdles that have to be overcome to achieve whatever goals a driver and team may have set for themselves.
“I think the hardest thing probably was trying to establish the same mindset every night and just stay calm because if you overextend yourself on any given night it will wear you out and not allow you to carry the same amount of weight each night just because we race so much,” he pointed out. “You have to learn how to bounce back and you have to understand that every night is not going to be smooth and perfect like you wish it would be. I think that was one of the big things I learned in my rookie season, how to be able to rebound quicker after a bad night and not allow one bad night to lead to three more bad nights because of that first bad night.”
Spencer Bayston(5) racing with Kyle Larson at Bristol Motor Speedway
After jumping from ride to ride early in his Sprint Car career, Bayston is happy to be in the midst of a second consecutive season with CJB Motorsports. He compares the experience he had during the very earliest part of his career to what he hopes will be true throughout 2023.
“It’s luxurious,” he stated. “When I ran Midgets when I was younger I ran with teams for seasons at a time so I got to experience a little bit of it. But from 2018 on, I was never in a car for more than a few nights at a time. It makes it so tough because there are so many sensations you get between chassis and motors and crew chiefs and the tracks you race. When you’re with a team, you have the ability to make a lot more progress and really calculate your way through things and establish a baseline to go off of. I feel one with the car because I get to run it night after night and I get to communicate with the same individuals night after night.”
With those earlier years of working his way up the ladder, Bayston can now enjoy the view looking back on his career path.
“It’s been fun to sit and look back a little bit because there have been so many different cars that I’ve had the chance to run over the last handful of years and all of that was built around trying to become an Outlaw, trying to establish a full-time ride with a well established team and go compete on a professional level. It’s been a fun journey looking back on it, but a couple of years ago while I was trying to hop around between rides, I wouldn’t call it fun. It was a bit stressful at times, but the fact that it’s all worked out, it’s cool to sit back and look at the pictures of the different cars that I’ve ran over the years to get to this point.”
Bayston and the entire World of Outlaws NOS Energy Sprint Car Series will next race at Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, Illinois on April 28 & 29 then on to the famed Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio on May 5 & 6.
Please consider also reading:
Jacob Allen describes life for a family team on the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars tour
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