During Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, William Byron, honoring Jeff Gordon with a throwback paint scheme, was doing his best to replicate the dominance that the four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion held over the field throughout much of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The 27-year-old driver, making his 14th career start at the iconic venue, put the No. 24 on the pole position for Sunday’s 400-mile contest with a blazing lap on Saturday, and when the green flag dropped, left the remainder of the 38-car field in his dust.
Byron paced the field throughout the entire 90-lap opening stage, and with help from a well-timed yellow during green-flag pit stops, was able to keep the lead through the end of the second stage — becoming the second driver since the advent of stage racing to lead all the laps in a race’s first two stages.
For a while, it appeared there wasn’t anything that could prevent the Hendrick Motorsports driver from leading every single lap en route to his second victory of 2025. Then, the final cycle of green flag stops happened.
There wasn’t anything egregiously negative about the pit cycle, either, as Rudy Fugle explained after the race, but the No. 24 team was just out-executed by a couple of others, including Tyler Reddick (23XI Racing) and Christopher Bell (Joe Gibbs Racing).
“We knew that Tyler [Reddick] was going to beat us, but with four lap fresher [tires], and if we come out where we’re supposed to come out, I think it goes really well, it just didn’t work out. That’s just racing. Everything goes down to that execution and the way things go, and [the No. 20 team] executed really well, and it is what it is. It’s tough to lead every lap here.”
“It’s the whole thing: From the lap in, to the lap after it, that whole thing did not go as well as we wanted it to go,” added Fugle. “It had nothing to do with the pit stop, but yellow line to yellow line, out, all that stuff, it adds up to we were on the wrong side of the bumper.”
Byron’s stranglehold of the top spot ended at Lap 243 – marking the most consecutive laps led to start a race in the history of the NextGen car, as well as the most to start any NASCAR Cup Series event at Darlington Raceway.
Once Byron lost control of the race, though, the Charlotte, North Carolina-native says that his hopes of returning to Victory Lane at Darlington Raceway for the second time in his career continued to fade away.
“First off, the team did a great job, great car,” said Byron. “We just needed control of the race there under green, and we lost that with the sequence the No. 45 went really short, you know, we lost a few spots under the green-flag sequence and that was the difference, and so we had a good decent run that time, [Christopher Bell] did a good job air blocking and keeping us behind and it took me a long time get by him.”
While the end result wasn’t exactly picture-perfect, a late-race caution by teammate Kyle Larson gave the No. 24 team another shot to get themselves into the game. The stop was executed well and sent Byron on track in third, allowing him to make the pass for the runner-up spot on the subsequent restart.
“Had a great pit stop there at the very end and was able to lineup on the second row, just need the front row to have a shot to win here,” Byron added. “Yeah, it sucks, it’ll sting to be this close.”
Despite the immense disappointment of losing out on a dominant victory, there is a silver lining for Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team: Byron is leading the NASCAR Cup Series points, and crew chief Rudy Fugle continues to be impressed by the strength of the team, bringing fast cars to the track each week.
“I mean, wins are what we’re here for. We love them and all those things, but it’s also a long season, and to have good finishes and be points leader and collect points and have fast cars and execute well, and have a great team is also important. So, we have things to work on, things to be better on, and it’s a long season, so, yeah, wins would be great. If we run like this, we’ll have plenty of them.”
