By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
For 243 laps, Sunday’s Goodyear 400 might as well have been called the William Byron Sweepstakes 400 at Darlington Raceway with the dominant performance he had in the No. 24 Axalta Chevrolet.
The pole sitter led every single lap up to that point and was on the cusp of NASCAR Cup Series perfection. A feat that hasn’t been done since Jeff Burton went wire-to-wire at New Hampshire in September 2000.
A bid for perfection evaporated as a result of green flag pit stops with Byron needing to make his scheduled pit stop, surrendering the lead to Denny Hamlin.
Byron would never regain the top spot as strategy favored guys like Christopher Bell which curb stomped the once dominant car down to fourth in the running order.
A late-race caution involving his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson allowed Byron an opportunity to fight back. However, a superb restart from Hamlin was the final dagger to the hopes of Byron scoring his second Darlington Cup win in three years.
As Hamlin scored his second straight win, Byron had to settle for second in the throwback paint scheme to Jeff Gordon’s final race in the No. 24 machine back in 2015.
With a strong performance Byron had, the loss will live on with him for a period of time. Nonetheless, he was more than proud of his entire No. 24 squad for bringing a car that saw him have a career performance as it pertains to laps led in a single race.
“(I’m) really proud of my team, bringing that level of effort and preparation, have a car like that,” said Byron. “For us to execute like that, it was looking like it was going to be a perfect race. We were going to lead every lap and was really proud of that.
“Those guys could be aggressive on the other side of the green flag cycle, we lost control there. Once we lost control, too late in the going to kind of get back up there.
“It sucks. I’m sure it will sting a lot tonight. There’s still a lot of positives. It stings in the moment, for sure.”
Now with Darlington in the books, Byron will head to Bristol Motor Speedway (Sunday at 3:00 p.m. ET on FS1) with a 49-point lead over Hamlin in the regular season standings.
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