BROOKLYN, Mich. – While Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron didn’t get his second top-10 finish of the year in Sunday’s rain-shortened FireKeepers Casino 400, the reigning Xfinity Series flexed his strength during the 133 laps of competition.
After qualifying 14th, Byron quickly maneuvered his No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet into the top-10, while an ill-handling car kept him from making further progress, Byron was the strongest of the Hendrick Motorsports brigade at the end of Stage 1, finishing eighth.
Throughout Stage 2, the Charlotte, N.C.-native wrestled a tight No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet but continued to persevere through the ill-handling race car to finish 10th and tally another stage point to his record.
A quick pit stop by his Henrick Motorsports team lifted Byron from 10th to eighth but restarted the race at Lap 125 in seventh. The bottom lane proved to be the team’s achilles heel on Sunday with the 20-year-old slipping to 13th when the caution flag waved when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wrecked on Lap 129.
“Yeah, I think that is the best car we have had this year,” said Byron. “We were able to run top seven or top eight. We still need to work on a few things, I feel like with the front of our car, but I think overall, we really had a good balance and really just seemed to hold on pretty good.
“I wanted some longer runs, but it was a pretty good race for us.”
The weather soon moved in and the race never restarted with Byron finishing 13th and second amongst the Hendrick Motorsports group ahead of Alex Bowman (16th) and Jimmie Johnson (20th).
The finish was Byron’s 10th top-20 finish of 2018 – paired with his sixth top-15 performance of the year. And while the finishing result might not have shown it, it could easily be pointed at the best performance by the rookie sensation this season.
Byron said he knew going into Sunday’s race he had a car capable of a strong performance.
“Yeah, especially after Saturday we were eighth fastest and we had pretty good speed in the car, pretty good drivability, so I knew it was going to be solid today and just fired off in the race and was good,” he added. “So, it’s a lot of fun when it’s that way.
“I feel like the last two weeks we have been about an eighth… we were seventh to eighth all day here and we were 10th last week all day, so just got to finish them off, but I think we know kind of what we need to do there.
“I wish I would have known that we were going to get rained on there, but from the looks of it, it kind of seemed like we were just going to have the normal stuff that we have had all day, so disappointing we couldn’t get a top 10, but overall we ran really well.”
Byron heads to Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway in two weeks where the young-gun will endure his first tango with the 2.52-mile road course. To prepare him for his Cup Series road course, Byron will partake in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race on Sat., June 23.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
