Byron Struggles at Daytona in Frustrating Race

A night that began promising ended in the garage for William Byron, who finished 37th with a 12 laps led, but he will participate in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs for the second time. 

Byron led 10 of the first 17 laps of the race, but ended up tumbling down the order towards the end of stage one and throughout most of stage two. He was able to come back to finish third in stage two while pushing Austin Dillon to second. 

When a caution came out with 20 laps to go for a three-car accident, Byron’s crew chief Rudy Fugle elected to pit for four tires on the number 24 Liberty University Chevrolet, setting Byron back to 23rd for the restart. While attempting to work his way back to the front, Byron was involved in an eight-car accident after Martin Truex Jr. was turned into the outside wall directly in front of Byron. 

“It looks like I was just one row short of getting through it…” Byron said to NBC pit reporter Dave Burns after the wreck. “We were the meat in the sandwich there.” 

Byron could not get going after the wreck, and he finished 37th after officially only completing 146 laps. It was his second DNF in three races, with his last being at Indianapolis two weeks ago. 

By virtue of his win at Homestead earlier in the season, Byron was already locked into the NASCAR playoffs. He will enter as the number eight seed in the field of 16 drivers, nine points ahead of the 12th-place cutoff line. The field will go from 16 to 12 after the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race at Bristol on Sept. 18. 

There was also some discussion throughout the night about the new package NASCAR brought to Daytona this week. After an accident involving Joey Logano at the last superspeedway race at Talladega in April, NASCAR made changes to slow the cars down to avoid airborne crashes. With one Talladega race during the playoffs, playoff teams were paying attention to how this race played out. 

“The lanes were really tight, so there wasn’t a lot of room to make a gap,” Byron said to Burns. “You basically just got pushed into the guy in front of you. It was kind of like bumper cars.”

With the regular season behind him, Byron will prepare for the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina, Sunday, Sept. 5 at 6 p.m. on NBC. He has had success at Darlington recently with two consecutive top five finishes in September of 2020 and May of 2021. 

Darlington has the distinction of being NASCAR’s first superspeedway (tracks more than 1 mile in length), being built in 1950. The Southern 500 was also NASCAR’s most prestigious race in its early years and still holds tremendous merit as a crown jewel to drivers and fans alike. The track also has a peculiar egg-shape because of a minnow pond outside of turn four. 

Joshua Lipowski is a Sports Reporter.