Four weeks ago, William Byron trailed standings leader and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott by 16 points, but he then used a victory and a top five in the next four races to claim the regular season championship in the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway.
Elliott’s best finish in those same four races was 13that Indianapolis. He finished last at Richmond after being eliminated in an 11-car crash.
“I think just finally some things went our way,” said Byron, who finished 12th to winner Austin Dillon. “I think, honestly, we’ve been doing a really good job on strategy, execution.
“We’ve brought good speed in August. I’d say our speed was the best in mid- to late June. I would say in May we were super-fast. Then June we were really fast. I crashed probably our best car at Pocono. Then July we just had some really bad finishes, really bad things happened to us. Ran out of fuel a couple times. I think we buckled down and really got back to the team we’re capable of being. Pretty impressive August. Probably our best August we’ve ever had just executing, thinking outside the box, bringing fast cars.”
Moving forward Byron now as lessons learned he and his team can use moving into the Playoffs now that he has survived Richmond, a track he’s sometimes struggled at.
“I think we just got to keep kind of shoring up some loose ends, I guess,” he said. "This team, this is probably our toughest track. New Hampshire is that way, as well. It's really tough. I feel like New Hampshire is different. It's more of a speed track. It's a little bit like this, but it's more speed-based. This place is just kind of more long runs and managing tire wear.
“I feel like today especially we had a car that was very tough on the tires. I think if we had today to do over again, we'd definitely work on that. Going towards these next few weeks, it's just about having speed.”
The first round of the Playoffs start at Darlington Raceway in two weeks.
“I'm really excited about Darlington,” Byron said. “I think we can always improve on pit road, rolling time, in and out, all that stuff. Yeah, we'll just see.”
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