By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor
FORT WORTH, Texas — We are closing in on the final round of the inaugural Truck Series championship Chase, and one of the biggest threats for the championship with three races remaining is a rookie Phenom — William Byron.
Byron, driving the No. 9 Toyota Tundra for Kyle Busch Motorsports, has set the world on fire this season breaking all-time rookie records with an impressive six victories so far in 2016. In an interview with Motorsports Tribune on Thursday, Byron admitted that he never expected to explode onto the scene like he has in his rookie Truck Series campaign.
“No I don’t think. It’s been pretty awesome,” Byron stated. “We’ve done a lot of things that we set out to do — probably more so than we thought. Just trying to keep it going. Just trying to keep the rhythm going this weekend, and hopefully just advance in this Chase through the next couple of weeks.”
Byron has a great shot of advancing to the championship race in Homestead, as this weekend he heads to one of the places where he has already recorded a victory this season — Texas Motor Speedway. Byron expressed excitement for Friday night’s Striping Technology 350, as he has a chance to sweep the season in the lone star state.
“Just excited to be here at Texas for this race in November. In the Chase, and hopefully we can get the sweep this year, that would be pretty cool,” Byron said.
Back in June, Byron led just six laps en route to victory at the 1.5-mile speedway in Fort Worth. But despite not leading a ton of laps, the victory was still very impressive as he outdueled truck series veteran Matt Crafton, who had dominated the race by leading 133 of the 167 laps.
Since that night in June, Byron has racked up four more wins and he has announced a move to Hendrick Motorsports for the 2017 season. But Byron isn’t worrying about the future just yet, he still has business to take care of in the present. Over the first 20 races of the 2016 season, the driver has gained experience and he’s now oozing with confidence. Expect good things over the next three races for this young man.
