{"id":76740,"date":"2024-10-09T01:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T01:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racer.com\/?p=368432"},"modified":"2024-10-09T01:00:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T01:00:15","slug":"byron-rising-to-the-occasion-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/byron-rising-to-the-occasion-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Byron rising to the occasion again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

William Byron has been the best NASCAR Cup Series playoff driver in the last two races.<\/p>\n

Not only has he earned back-to-back top-five finishes, he\u2019s also been the highest-finishing playoff driver. This has seen Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team already locked into the Round of 8 on points, and going into the elimination race at the Charlotte road course, they are the only ones guaranteed a spot in the next round.<\/p>\n

Byron also leads the overall point standings, although in the postseason that hardly matters when it\u2019s about getting to Phoenix Raceway and being the last man standing. You can ask him what it meant to lead the Cup Series in multiple statistics last year before the finale played out at Phoenix. Spoiler alert: It meant nothing. He didn\u2019t win the championship. The 2017 Xfinity series title-winner finished third behind Team Penske\u2019s Ryan Blaney and his own teammate, Kyle Larson.<\/p>\n

But being the only driver locked into the next round and heading the points table has to feel good for now. Actually, it probably feels really<\/em> good for a driver who was given the chance to defend his race team over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Byron was asked by RACER if he was bothered by the comments about his race team. The question stemmed from him telling NBC Sports after the Kansas Speedway race that his team has \u201cgotten a lot of over the summer.\u201d It was a reference to what\u2019s become a common theme in recent seasons: the No. 24 team has a dip in results through the midseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t bother me that people say or notice, but it bothers me (because) we\u2019re not that much different from any other team,\u201d Byron said. \u201cIf you look statistically, we have 10 top fives and 16 top 10s, and that\u2019s right in line with the other five or six guys that we\u2019re racing. So, yes, we haven\u2019t had a stellar season based on what we did last year, but we\u2019re still plugging along and finishing races in the front \u2026 and we just need to continue that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" From Daytona to doldrums — the Hendrick team can always turn it around when it counts. Gavin Baker\/Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

The statistics are spot on. Byron has the second most wins in the series \u2013 three \u2013 behind teammate Kyle Larson and second most top-10 finishes (16) behind Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell.<\/p>\n

And to further prove Byron\u2019s point, the top 10 drivers in the Cup Series standings indeed have similar numbers.<\/p>\n

Byron: three wins, 10 top fives, 16 top 10s
\nBell: three wins, 11 top fives, 19 top 10s
\nLarson: five wins, 12 top fives, 15 top 10s
\nDenny Hamlin: three wins, 10 top fives, 15 top 10s
\nAlex Bowman: one win, seven top fives, 15 top 10s
\nRyan Blaney: two wins, nine top fives, 14 top 10s
\nTyler Reddick: two wins, 11 top fives, 19 top 10s
\nChase Elliott: one win, eight top fives, 15 top 10s
\nJoey Logano: two wins, five top fives, nine top 10s
\nDaniel Suarez: one win, three fives, seven top 10s <\/p>\n

\u201cIt bothers me that we get treated a little differently because everyone this year has been, for the most part, pretty inconsistent,\u201d Byron continued. \u201cBut for us, we\u2019re trying to continue to put weeks together and plug away and try to put back-to-back weeks together. It\u2019s tough when you go from a mile-and-a-half to a speedway; you don\u2019t really have control of that result. So, we\u2019re trying to do more of that \u2013 more consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the results were skewed during the summer, it was, Byron admitted, the product of fast cars with no payoff or slow cars that finished only where they were capable. Byron ended the regular season fifth in the championship standings and was reseeded fourth with 22 playoff points.<\/p>\n

\"\" Proving the naysayers wrong once again. The No. 24 way. Rusty Jarrett\/Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

Although the comments rubbed him the wrong way, Byron didn\u2019t take it as being written off as a contender for the championship. Nor should he be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there\u2019s a certain narrative out there of, \u2018Hey, they\u2019re not good in the summertime,\u2019 and I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s completely true,\u201d Byron said. \u201cI think we have certain races that are great in the summertime and I think we had certain weeks that we weren\u2019t that great. But you can look across the whole garage and that\u2019s pretty consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is why Byron still has as good a shot as anyone to win the Cup Series title. Over the last few weeks he\u2019s been the one who has stood out from the field, and it must bring him added satisfaction that the team is showing its capabilities at the time it matters most.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Byron has been the best NASCAR Cup Series playoff driver in the last two races. Not only has he earned back-to-back top-five finishes, he\u2019s also been the highest-finishing playoff driver. This has seen Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team already locked into the Round of 8 on points, and going into the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","has-thumb","has-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}