CONCORD, N.C. – Another NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2024 for Hendrick Motorsports would be a milestone title, indeed.
Did someone say, ‘milestone’?
We know just the man for the job!
Enter William Byron, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, who has made a habit of winning meaningful races and coming up with big-time performances when needed.
Let’s look at what’s at stake. Yeah, a Cup title is always a big deal, right?
But the one that awaits whoever prevails from the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 10 would be especially meaningful in the Hendrick Motorsports garage.
First, it would be the 15th in the organization’s history. No small number, to be sure.
But consider this: Jeff Gordon won the first championship for Hendrick Motorsports in 1995. Counting that season through this one, that’s 30 seasons of Cup Series competition, meaning if one of the company’s four current drivers can snag the Bill France Cup, that would mean half – 15 of the last 30, to be exact – of the championships since Gordon broke down the door will belong to Hendrick Motorsports.
No pressure, boys!
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But pressure has never seemingly meant much to Byron, at least not in terms of a deterrent. He picked up Hendrick Motorsports’ 300th win at Texas Motor Speedway last season, gave the organization its Cup Series-leading ninth Daytona 500 win in February and, capped off a 40th-anniversary celebration at Martinsville Speedway by holding off his teammates for a win in an unforgettable 1-2-3 finish in April.
Hey, maybe you don’t buy into such talk. Maybe you don’t believe in any such thing as a “clutch gene.” Or Santa Claus. Or fun.
But there are plenty of stone-cold facts that speak to Byron being a title contender as well.
Several of those come in the Gen-7 data. Byron is tied for the most wins (11) with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson since the car was introduced in 2022. He has 28 top-five finishes in that time with 45 top 10s, an average finish of 13.6 and has led 2,022 laps.
And eight of his 13 career victories have come at tracks in the postseason. That includes Martinsville and Atlanta Motor Speedway, two of the three venues in which Byron has multiple wins in his Cup career (two each).
Perhaps we could point you, ye of little faith and much skepticism, to last year, when Byron won a Cup Series-high six races en route to his first berth into the Championship 4. Yep, even at the young age of 26, the baby of a young Hendrick Motorsports driving stable, Byron knows the path to Phoenix.
“I’m sure they’ll go back to last year and go, ‘OK, here’s our strengths. Here’s our weaknesses. Here’s what we did last year. Here’s what we think we need to do this year,’” Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman and NASCAR Hall of Famer, Jeff Gordon said. “I think they got a little bit off track in the summer but I’ve seen them kind of revitalize that strength they have as a team that is capable of winning. I won’t be surprised if you see them win early in the playoffs and keep that momentum going.”
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But more than the wins and the success, it was a moment of struggle on that journey that really stuck out.
Nowhere does Byron have better career numbers than Martinsville. His 309 laps led at the half-mile paperclip are the most of any track. Ditto his five top-five finishes and his seven top 10s there are tied for the most in his career with Phoenix and Kansas Speedway. Both latter tracks are also in the postseason, by the way.
But last fall, with cutline looming in a Round-of-8 elimination race at the Virginia bullring, while fighting an uncharacteristically yet violently ill-handling race car and all during a heatwave at one of NASCAR’s most physically demanding tracks, Byron persevered. He fought through 500 laps, not chasing a win but trying to hold on to the points cushion he entered with.
He succeeded and the bond between driver and team only strengthened because of the adversity.
“It was the first time since he’s been at Hendrick Motorsports that I’ve had to see him really fight through a struggling performance and that makes you a better race car driver. It makes your whole team better,” Gordon said. “It sucks. It’s not fun for anybody to go through and I hear a lot of athletes and coaches talk about how important the wins are but the losses are the ones you really learn the life lessons from that really builds your character, builds you into a stronger competitor. I think that race was critical for them and brought them into this season a much stronger unit.”
A stronger unit than the one that visited victory lane half-a-dozen times and finished third in the championship standings a year ago?
Sounds like a title contender to us.