After a dramatic victory in the Round of 8 elimination race last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, William Byron maintained a deliberately low profile on his trip to Phoenix Raceway for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Byron elected to fly commercial to the title race.
“I live 15 minutes from the commercial airport in Charlotte,” Byron explained. “I go TSA Precheck, keep my head down—it’s great. I love it. I love to get treated like a normal person, which I am.”
Normal people, however, don’t drive stock cars at breakneck speeds in hopes of securing a series title. That’s what Byron will do on Sunday, when he chases the Bill France Cup for the third year in a row.
In 2023, Byron won the pole for the Championship Race and dominated the early portions of the event. He won the first stage and led 95 laps but faded to fourth as the track cooled in the late afternoon.
As it turned out, that experience was also emblematic of the current season, where inauspicious circumstances often kept Byron from finishing as well as he ran during most of a particular event.
“We’ve learned the hard way this year that it’s never over,” Byron said. “I think that’s what sticks with me. I mean, honestly, until that guy throws the checkered flag, the race is not over.
“I’ve learned that the hard way this year, and that’s kind of fueled the way I prepared.”
In the first race of the Round of 8, Byron was running up front when Ty Dillon slowed in front of him, planning to enter pit road. Unable to avoid Dillon’s car, Byron slammed into it with a vicious impact that knocked him out of the race.
A week later at Talladega, Byron was running comfortably in the top 10 when he spun in the tri-oval a quarter-mile short of the finish line.
Those two incidents set up a must-win situation for Byron at Martinsville, a circumstance that allowed him to race without attention to points. That’s similar to the situation he’ll face Sunday at Phoenix, where the driver who finishes highest among the Championship 4 will claim the title.
“I did look at the board during the race, and I’m like, ‘It’s so nice not to be worried about this BS,’” Byron said of the Martinsville run. “It’s not necessarily winner-take-all per se (at Phoenix), but it definitely is a third stage (is) what matters.
“You have to race the race, but the end is all that really matters.”
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