There’s no doubt William Byron has been one of the top drivers on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit the past two seasons.
Aside from his ground-breaking Daytona 500 victory in February, the Hendrick Motorsports driver won at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas last week, is the only driver to win twice this season and ranks sixth in the standings.
While momentum is certainly riding on his side, this weekend’s trip to Richmond Raceway in Virginia is a mystery for the No. 24 team.
In their last three trips to the .75-mile D-shaped oval, Byron and his team have failed to finish better than 11th, with two of those finishes being 21st or worse.
While his average starting position across those three races is 4.33, finding a good balance on race day has been puzzling.
“Yeah, I mean it’s just one of those places we go to that we just don’t have an idea of how it’s going to go,” Byron said. “So anytime you go to a track and you don’t really have a notebook that you feel confident on – we’ve had some good races here, but we’ve never shown up here knowing that we can run an easy top 10 or compete for a win.
“And not that we go anywhere thinking it’s going to be a cake walk, but you go to certain tracks and know that you have a great notebook, like going to COTA or going to Watkins Glen.”
Despite not having an expansive notebook to fall back on at Richmond, Byron believes a test earlier this year may pay big dividends during Sunday night’s Toyota Owners 400.
“I feel like this is one of those places where we’re still trying to build that solid notebook, but I feel really good going into this race because we had a great test a couple of weeks ago.”
Entering this weekend, NASCAR’s new short-track package will get a third look after its last stint at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway two races ago. It may be a topic of conversation, however, Byron says the team doesn’t “really focus on the package that much, in terms of how it changes our preparation.”
“I think we maybe overestimated the difference there at first, so honestly we’re just trying to do the same things and just adapt to whatever the handling issues are,” Byron said. “A lot of people have asked me – is it easier to pass … is it harder?
“I don’t really care; I just want my race car to go fast. So that’s all I care about. I just want us to be faster than everybody else. The fast guys can usually pass people.”
Byron starts 13th, while teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott share the front row for Sunday’s race.