DOVER, Del. – William Byron led the way for Hendrick Motorsports at Dover Motor Speedway on Monday afternoon with a fourth-place finish.
The driver of the No. 24 Raptor Tough.com led a race-high 193 laps on the day and scored his series-best sixth stage win of the season in the opening segment. He also crossed a personal milestone as he now has over 2,000 laps led in the NASCAR Cup Series with 2,184 laps led after the Dover race.
After finishing second in the stage two, the No. 24 pit crew had its best stop of the season during the stage break. The crew of Spencer Bishop (jackman), Jeff Cordero (front-tire changer), Orane Ossowski (rear-tire changer), Ryan Patton (tire carrier) and Landon Walker (fueler) busted out a 9.4-second four-tire stop (per FS1’s telecast) to give Byron back the lead. However, the changing conditions of the day, with the sun coming out, led to the 25-year-old’s ride getting too loose and having trouble getting the right rear to build. As a result, Byron fell back to seventh before a caution came out with 13 laps to go.
Taking four tires under caution, Byron was able to work himself back in the top five on the seven-lap run to close the race. His fourth-place finish marks his fourth top-five of the 2023 season.
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"Proud of the effort," Byron said after matching his track-best result with his third fourth-place result at Dover. "Getting a top five is great. The No. 24 RaptorTough.com Chevy was really good today. Definitely needed some more, but we’re having speed at all different kinds of tracks. In our history, this hasn’t been our best track. We came with something a little bit different to try and help that. I think it did for the majority of the race, but just got too loose."
Josh Berry grabbed a 10th-place finish in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The top-10 finish is his third in six starts with Hendrick Motorsports this season. He also led three laps on the day.
"I think it was a really solid day for the No. 48 Ally Chevy team," Berry said. "We needed a little bit more there to be a little bit better. With the amount of experience I have in Cup cars, I feel like to run about where we did was really solid. Just proud of Blake (Harris, crew chief) and everybody on this team for a great job."
Berry is filling in for the injured Alex Bowman, who is sidelined for after suffering a fractured vertebra in a sprint car accident in Iowa last Tuesday. Bowman was off to a solid start in 2023, leading the series in average finish at 10.30. He headlined the organization’s historic top-four finishing positions sweep at Dover in 2021.
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In his third start back from a fractured tibia, Chase Elliott finished 11th in the No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. The two-time Dover winner was battling a loose race car late in the event. Since returning, he has not finished outside the top 12.
Kyle Larson had a fast car in the opening stage. The driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was running fifth and in position to pass Ross Chastain for fourth on lap 81. However, contact between Chastain and Brennan Poole led to Poole spinning and coming back up the track. Larson had nowhere to go and made contact with Poole’s car, resulting in significant right-front damage. The team cleared the damaged vehicle policy and took the car to garage for work, eventually rejoining the race for the start of the second stage. He finished 32nd on the day.
"I’m proud of the race cars my team is bringing," Larson told reporters. "We are the fastest car every week. We were getting ready to drive past him (Chastain). I think we could have won that first stage had it gone green. We were super fast. Then, you don’t know how the rest of the day is going to play out. My car was really fast. I just don’t have any luck right now."
Martin Truex Jr. won the 400-lap race, which was postponed from Sunday due to wet weather and run on a Monday for the second straight year.
The Cup Series will be back in action on Sunday, May 7, for the 12th race of the season at Kansas Speedway. Tune in to watch Hendrick Motorsports go after its ninth win at the 1.5-mile track at 3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.