LAS VEGAS, Nev: When Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron spun on Lap 181 in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway, it appeared that a sold start to his first race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs would end with a snag.
But with a fast No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, a break from teammate Chase Elliott and a gutsy two-tire call from seven-time championship crew chief Chad Knaus, Byron was able to recover in Sin City for a solid seventh-place finish.
While running in the top-10, Byron found himself mixed in with a wad of cars when contact with Ryan Blaney caused a left-rear tire rub causing Byron to spin off Turn 4 and bring out the caution.
Able to limp his car back to pit road, the team was able to change tires with Byron sneaking ahead of then-leader Chase Elliott who was pacing the field at the time of caution. Approaching the end of pit road, Elliott slowed enough to allow Byron to escape pit lane without losing a lap.
That favor allowed Byron to restart deep in the field but on the lead lap. A quick caution three laps after the restart allowed Byron to catch onto the rear of the lead lap cars and make a charge back to the front.
With the race running 71 green flag laps to the finish. Byron was able to take advantage of a two right-side tire pit stop at Lap 235 and climb from 10th to seventh over the remaining 32 laps to earn his 10th top-10 finish of the season and back-to-back top-10 finishes after finishing fourth at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sept. 8.
“We just had to recover. I don’t really know what happened there. I was just running on the wall on the back straightaway and got hit in the left rear. I thought the tire was going to last and hold up. It cleared the fender for a while and it obviously had a cut in it already. That was a big bummer. We were really fortunate that the caution came out when we spun. That was really good for us. Overall, we were able to rally to a seventh-place finish. So, that’s not bad.”
Byron added, “It was crazy. You think about all of the things that can go wrong in a race. It’s tough, you have to really manage the whole race and recover from things that happen. It seemed like every car has something that happened during this race, so you just have to recover from it.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
