William Byron grabbed his second win of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season at Iowa Speedway in a caution-marred stretch to the end of the 350 laps Sunday evening. This victory has come as a rebound for the driver, who hadn't been to victory lane since winning the Daytona 500 for the second straight year. Since that win, Byron had lost two races, at Michigan and Indianapolis, in the same way he won tonight: by gambling on fuel.
Byron came to pit for the final time with144 laps remaining. It wasn't originally planned to be his final pit stop, but with cautions eating into the third stage, Byron and Rudy Fugle, his crew chief, made the decision to try to hold on up front.
Byron beat pole sitter Chase Briscoe to the line by a second after being told repeatedly over the last 20 laps to back it up. Briscoe's final fuel stop was 18 laps later than Byron's, still putting him into a save mode along with Brad Keselowski, as Ryan Blaney ran the top three down on fresh tires and plenty of fuel.
Byron led the majority of the first stage after taking the lead from Briscoe on the opening lap until he finally couldn't hold off Keselowski after a 42-lap battle late in the stage. Keselowski finally made it by Byron to win his first stage of the year as the two lapped Kyle Busch, who started at the back of the pack following a crash in qualifying.
Keselowski would go on to win both stages before a seven-caution stage three restacked the deck several times.
"How about that for some fuel mileage?" Byron told NASCAR on NBC. "We’ve had our fair share of things not go our way with fuel mileage. Super thankful for Rudy and all these guys, all the engineers back at the shop. This whole race team, we’ve been through a lot this year, a lot of growing pains. It felt like we had a good car and kinda raced it."
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