William Byron might have had no issue advancing out of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series postseason, but it was hardly smooth sailing.
“The start of the playoffs was a shock to us,” Byron said Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
He and the No. 24 team began the postseason as the No. 2 seed after winning the regular season championship. He was tied with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson for the most play off points, 32, in the series. The accomplishment came on the strength of two race victories and an impressive run of leading the point standings for 21 of the 26 races in the regular season.
The bucket of cold water came when the reset occurred. Byron finished no better than 11th in the first three-race round, didn’t lead a lap, and scored the eighth-most points of any playoff driver. He ranked 13th on points scored for all drivers in the series during those three races.
“I think, as good as we’ve run all year, there have been very few races where I felt like I would run worse than eighth, honestly,” Byron said. “And then it felt like in the first round, we were scratching and clawing for top 10s. Yeah, the first round was a shock to us.
“We’ve put a lot of work into these [next] three races, and we’re putting our best foot forward. There is still a lot of season left, though. It’s kind of a marathon within itself. There are so many steps to this deal, so the way this format is, you just have to keep advancing and hopefully you’re at your best when it counts.”
Byron qualified fifth for Sunday’s race after being the fastest overall in Cup Series practice. A day of work, Byron felt, was “pretty good” for their standards at New Hampshire. He was optimistic about how the car felt and hopeful that it would translate to a successful race day.
Hendrick Motorsports has not won at New Hampshire since 2012. Byron has never finished in the top 10 at the track in seven starts.
“The thought for us was, ‘OK, we have a lot of bonus points, maybe we can go out there and get some m ore,’ and try to capitalize on a race win or something like that,” he said about how the first round played out. “We weren’t close to that in the first round, so we had to kind of reset our goals and expectations. We did kind of survive and advance; we did that flawlessly. We were out of the drama, the wrecks and things that happened.
