Three years into his NASCAR Cup Series career, William Byron’s pleased with his current trajectory despite a lack of victory lane visits.
The paths of William Byron and Didi Gregorius will likely never cross. After all, one’s a driver on the NASCAR Cup Series national tour and the latter is a Major League shortstop in Philadelphia. The two, however, share an exclusive, if not unspoken, bond in that each held the most unenviable position their premier circuit has ever seen.
Both Byron and Gregorius were the ones to follow the trails of athletic icons from the 1990s that changed their respective sports forever and stretched their respective careers into the new century. Each complimented their on-field/track exploits with larger-than-life personalities that brought their sport beyond the pages of, say, Sports Illustrated. But that’s how big Jeff Gordon and Derek Jeter respectively were to auto racing and baseball. Gregorius spent the past five seasons stepping out of Jeter’s cleat trails as the New York Yankees’ shortstop and made a name for himself. Such efforts were rewarded with a new, $14 million deal with the Phillies.
Three seasons in, Byron’s still working on that second part.
The 22-year-old’s spot in Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 24 Chevrolet is safe by all accounts. But a visit to victory lane still awaits 88 starts into his Cup career. Technically speaking, he isn’t the “true” successor to Gordon, as Chase Elliott took over the car for two years after Gordon’s 2015 retirement. But Elliott has since made a name for himself in the rebranded No. 9 for Hendrick, leaving the current burden to Byron, who won the 2017 Xfinity Series title less than two weeks before he turned 20.
Pressure, however, isn’t getting to Byron. He’s currently teetering on the brink of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff picture, holding the 14th of 16 postseason seeds and 48 points ahead of the cutoff. The Gordon successor is more pleased about the progress he’s making on his third go-around.
“It’s definitely easy to get frustrated with the fact that we haven’t won,” Byron said in a Friday afternoon Zoom teleconference. “I think that at this point, just with our progression we had last year, at this point we would have thought we’d have a few more late-race chances at it. I think we’ve had some cars on some days that were capable of winning.”
“But, to be honest with you, we’ve had six or seven issues this year that have really been no fault of one thing or one individual, but we’ve just as a team, we’ve just not executed in those situations. We’ve had flat tires and different issues. Those were some of our best races and some of our best chances to win and unfortunately, those kind of got washed away for us. But honestly, we just try to continue bringing the same speed and we know if we can bring that same speed that we’ve had on those weekends when things did go wrong, we’ll give ourselves a shot to win. So, yeah, we expect to win. We hope to win soon. We’ve just got to continue to bring the speed to do it and hopefully execute those moments.â€
There has, indeed, been a good share of things to smile upon in the No. 24 stall. Byron’s squad won one of the two qualifying races prior to the Daytona 500 and has won stages at Darlington and Indianapolis since NASCAR returned from its coronavirus pause. Since a wreck took him out of the early stages of Daytona’s season-opener, Byron has finished 15 consecutive races, running all 32 laps in the process.
Bad luck, however, like a flat tire in the latter event on Sunday, has denied him a win and kept him on the playoff bubble. General consistency has followed. Last season saw Byron beat out Hendrick teammates Alex Bowman and Jimmie Johnson in top-ten finishes. But Byron, backed by the expertise of former Johnson pit boss Chad Knaus (who was on board for all seven of Johnson’s titles), is enthused by the progress he’s made in his third season.
“I think we’ve learned through the adversity that we’ve had this year,” Byron noticed. “Our pit crew has improved. I think that was an area that we needed to improve at the beginning of the year, and we made some changes and things to improve that. So, I think we’re there now. We just have to keep ourselves in a good points position and then, get toward the Playoffs and hopefully turn that speed and potential into there so we can maybe go farther than the Round of 12 like we did last year.â€
Byron has even taught himself to use misfortune as a positive experience.
“When adversity would hit me at the beginning of my career, it really affected me toward the next week and I would really kind of race differently because of it,” Byron said in a look back. Maybe (I’d be) more conservative or more aggressive, trying to make up for it. Whereas now I feel I just don’t look at it and I don’t really pay attention to the bad fortune that happens. It definitely frustrated me a lot the day of the race, and really maybe even carries over until the next morning, but that’s really it. Once we get past the next morning, it really doesn’t affect me anymore. And that’s been a difference for me. I think that’s just maturity, probably, and the race team and myself.”
Byron has drawn a starting position of 21st as the NASCAR Cup Series descends upon Kentucky Speedway for Sunday afternoon’s Quaker State 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, FS1).
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags