William Byron Reacts to Season Slump Since Martinsville

by
Noah Lewis
July 9, 2022

Photo Credit to NASCARMedia / Noah Lewis via YouTube

HAMPTON, Ga. – Back in April, William Byron became this season’s first two-time race winner after scoring victories at both Atlanta Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. The victories are the first time in the 24-year-old’s Cup Series career that he’s collected more than one win in a season.

However, since the win, Byron has only managed one top-10 in 10 races. Furthermore, he’s only led 88 laps, a big drop from the 482 laps led rolling out of Martinsville. So what’s going on with the No. 24 team?

“It’s been a rough stretch,” Byron told NBC Sports’ Nate Ryan in a press conference. “It’s not been from a lack of effort. I feel like for a couple of weeks there you’re still riding the high of winning at Martinsville, getting your second win, all those things. So we kind of went to Bristol dirt which is its own beast, Talladega which is its own beast, we just got on a rough patch there.

“We’ve had speed. Darlington, obviously, had speed. Kansas, we were leading the race, had a flat tire…There’s been a lot of other races where-like Charlotte, qualified fifth, ran in the top-five for most of that race and we made a strategy decision to short pit that stage. Given how many cautions there were at Charlotte, we were running out of tires, so we restarted 18th and unfortunately got in that crash that took out 10 cars plus.

“There’s been maybe one or two races where we didn’t have any speed. I think Gateway, we were really bad. That was a wake-up call for sure. Then there’s been a couple, like last week, we had a loose wheel and fortunately, it didn’t come off. We were running 8th at the time after starting way deep in the pack.

“So, it’s been circumstantial things, the results don’t look good at all but we know that majority of the time, I’d say 75% of the time, we’ve had the speed to compete. It’s just been a lot of circumstantial things-some in our control and a lot out of our control, honestly…It’s just been tough to put a smooth solid weekend together.”

Byron hopes that maybe Atlanta will be the place to restart that string of consistency we’re used to from him. There’s no doubt that expectations are at an all-time high for the fifth-year Cup driver. What better place to turn things around than the one where he scored his first win of the season back in March?