William Byron’s relatively short but impressive career in the NASCAR Cup Series has been leading up to this moment. The 25-year-old driver is about to close his sixth — and, by far, most successful — season racing at the sport’s highest level Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, where he’ll be one of four drivers racing for the Cup championship.
Byron’s career-high six wins on the season so far and largely consistent speed throughout the first 35 races of the season helped propel him to his first Championship 4 round. For NASCAR’s crown, the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver compete against Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell.
Of those six wins in 2023, one was at Phoenix in March, which could help give him a slight edge this weekend on the one-mile desert track.
“It helps just with confidence and knowing what the car needs to feel like and having to have a good memory of all those things in the spring,” Byron told For The Win. “So the track temperature and everything is different this time around. So I think it’ll be a little bit different, but I feel like we can adapt.”
For The Win spoke with Byron on Wednesday after he arrived in Phoenix about qualifying for his first championship race, his competitors and embracing an underdog mentality.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Congrats on your first Championship 4 berth. How do you think you and the No. 24 team measure up against the other three title contenders?
I think our team has been really consistent this year, and we’ve had a lot of speed at certain race tracks. And I feel like Phoenix is one of those. So I don’t know, it’s hard to really measure it. I think Ryan [Blaney] and the 12 team’s probably the fastest team right now in the moment, but I feel like you never know how the speed’s gonna line up going to the race track for one weekend. And we’ve all had our moments of having a lot of speed, so I feel like we’ll be really competitive. It’s just a matter of trying to execute the race and put ourselves in a good position at the end to win it.
Has preparation this week been any different for you guys with Kyle Larson and the No. 5 team?
We share a lot of notes, but we kind of do our own thing when it comes to building the setup and all the little details. So there’s definitely quite a few things that are different between the two teams just naturally when we kind of go off and work on everything, but we still have the same resources and everything like that. So I feel like we all work really close together weekly, and usually, we have a pretty similar driving style between Kyle and I — just of what we want the setup to feel like — so that helps.
Do you feel like you and Kyle will help each other a little to ensure you're both still in the running by the end of the race, or is it every team for themselves at this point?
I think we’ll try to race really well. We always do. But I think when it comes to the race, we’ll just try to execute, and if we happen to be both up front, we try not to cause any issues that would hurt either one of us. So kind of yes or no. If we’re racing hard and we’re up front, then we’re going to try to take care of each other as best we can. But at the same time, it’s kind of run your own race.
Of the Championship 4 drivers, you're the only one to advance based on points rather than with a win. Do you have an underdog mentality because of that?
I think so. Definitely our Round of 8 wasn’t as smooth as we wanted it to be. We were kind of struggling for some speed, and then we just didn’t have the balance on some of the tracks. Overall, we didn’t have the best, smoothness round, but we had really good second round, and we just had a really good season. So I feel like it’s nice to come in a bit under the radar. And we’ve been preparing for Phoenix for a long time, so it’s just trying to put all the pieces together and show up with the best car we can. I feel like we’re in a good spot. We just gotta go out there and see what we got.
Are you approaching this as the championship race, or is this just the 36th race of the season and you're going into it like any other?
It’s definitely not like any other race for the four of us. For us, it’s really intense, and it’s fun. It’s just a great opportunity. It’s a chance to go out there, one race, winner take all, I think that’s a great feeling to go after. So I’m excited for it. I’ve been in a final four before in the [second-tier] Xfinity Series. And remember a lot of what that’s like and how fun it is and intense. You have a lot of moments in the race that are critical, so it’ll take a high-commitment level to win the race and win the championship. So I think that’s fun.
What do you think it says about the state of the sport that this is, yet again, the youngest group of Championship 4 drivers?
It’s pretty amazing. When I came in the sport, there was a lot of talk about if the young drivers could live up to the hype. And there was a lot of criticism from the older drivers as, “Hey, these guys, they don’t know what they’re doing yet.” And there’s always kind of been that old versus new talk and conversation in racing.
To have the youngest final four that we’ve had is pretty awesome, and it’s all guys that I really grew up racing around. Ryan, I raced a little bit in Xfinity, and Kyle and I raced in [the third-tier Truck Series] when he would come and do one-off starts, and Christopher Bell and I were teammates in the Truck Series. So pretty awesome to see kind of how far we’ve all come and starting to grow into our own.
With you, Blaney and your girlfriend, Erin Blaney (Ryan's sister), are there any fun bets or weirdness with you?
No, we actually have a pretty close relationship off the track, and we spend time together, obviously. But when we get on the track, it’s competition, And we try to focus on our jobs and try to get the best result for our team. And it is fun, though, to battle with him because we’ve had good battles over the years. And it’s fun to battle it out because you feel like — you’re happy if he wins, in some ways and after the fact, so it’s a it’s a cool, cool thing.
