William Byron's 2025 season started the same as his 2024, with a win in the Daytona 500, relieving the 27-year-old Hendrick Motorsports driver from the stress of making the playoffs as soon as the season got underway and giving him the chance to build towards a regular-season championship.
Last night, Byron clinched the regular season championship one week ahead of the regular season finale back when the Cup Series returns to Daytona, with a 12-place finish at Richmond Raceway, where he earned 27 points: 25 for his race finish and two for his Stage 2 finish of ninth.
The quick statistics of how he got there are two wins, nine top-fives, 13 top-10s, an average finishing position of 13.68, three DNFs, and 241 stage points. He earned 24 more stage points than Penske's Ryan Blaney, with those two being the outliers this year as the only two drivers to collect more than 200 stage points through the first 25 races of the season.
Blaney held the points lead through the first two races before a slew of DNFs put the Penske driver in a risky zone before his first win of the season at Nashville Superspeedway.
Following the regular season penultimate race at Richmond, Byron sits 68 points ahead of Chase Elliott. A perfect race earns a driver 61 points, meaning that even if Byron DNF'd in the opening stage next weekend at Daytona, he would hold the points lead to end the season. Elliott was the only driver with a genuine fighting chance entering Richmond, with Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick sitting as outliers.
Byron and Elliott's teammate, Kyle Larson, was the only driver this year to have a perfect points race, sweeping the stages in his most recent win at Kansasand earning the new Xfinity Fastest Lap Award. He also swept the stages in his win at Bristol, but didn't secure the new extra point.
Elliott had his first DNF of the season in Saturday night's Cook-Out 400, when he was swept up in the aftermath of a Crash that started when Chase Briscoe was turned in front of the midfield.
From there, a decent day would be enough for Byron to lock up the regular season early.
NASCAR did not hold a celebration for Byron at Richmond Saturday night, as they’re probably waiting to celebrate at Daytona next week.
There were only four race weekends where Byron did not enter as the points leader.
Byron first took the lead in the points following his second-place finish at COTA, bouncing back from 27th at Atlanta.
His points lead was high enough that he didn’t budge from the top spot following back-to-back crashes at the Summer Atlanta race and the Chicago Street Race. A DNF and 31st-place finish at Dover pushed him to the second spot for two weeks, with his teammate Elliott replacing him at the top spot after the Dover crash. He reclaimed the top of the points standings with a win at Iowa.
This will be Byron's sixth time in the NASCAR Playoffs, making it every year since his rookie campaign in 2019. He's advanced to the Championship race at Phoenix the last two seasons.
Last year, Byron made it to the Round of Four following a controversial penalty to Christopher Bell at Martinsville for riding the wall in an attempt to avoid a collision.
Byron ultimately finished third in the Championship race at Phoenix behind fellow 2024 Champion Joey Loganoand fellow Championship Four competitor Ryan Blaney. 2024 was the second consecutive season that Byron made the Championship Four, having also finished third in 2023.
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