RICHMOND, Va.: For a while it appeared that William Byron and his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team would pickup their second NASCAR Cup Series win of the season in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway.
Teams were split on running a one or two-stop pit strategy in the final stage of Sunday’s race with Byron and Martin Truex Jr. opting for one stop in the 170-lap stage, while Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick were among those using two stops.
Like most of the field, Byron and crew chief Rudy Fugle planned to pit early with roughly 90 laps to go in Stage 3 – hoping to deflect others on a similar strategy.
The team’s strategy, however faded late into the seventh Cup race of the season and despite being at the front of the pack on older tires, Byron didn’t have grip to hold off the hard-charging Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick to net his fourth career Cup Series victory.
Byron, on older tires, managed to hang on the lead for 71 laps but Hamlin – on fresher tires eventually ran him down and swiped the lead away from the Hendrick Motorsports driver with four of 400 laps remaining.
A lap later, Byron lost second place to Harvick and soldiered to the checkered flag in third, a distant 2.735 seconds behind Hamlin.
“Thought we probably did the best job we could. It didn’t quite work out,” said Byron. “I thought there at the end they told me I was just racing the 19 (Truex). I’m like ok I got him, but then the 4 (Harvick) and the 11 (Hamlin) were on a totally different planet.
“That’s just part of it. There wasn’t anything I could do about them, so it was probably four or five to go and Brandon (Lines) was coaching me on keeping the tires underneath it and having good exits and entries.
“Especially making those guys go around me on the top was definitely better. The times that guys would get underneath me was really, really hard to get back connected and get a good lap put together.”
Even though Byron knew he could not change the outcome of the race under the circumstances, he was proud of the team bouncing back from being horrible midway through the race.
“The middle of the race we were terrible and we just couldn’t get in the corner at all and if you can’t get into the corner you can’t put consistent laps together. It’s nice to have a run like we had today.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
