William Byron capped off a perfect weekend leading from the pole and holding off a hard charging Christopher Bell to score a dominating win Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas.
In a race that saw only two cautions for Stage breaks, it was all up to who could play a strategy game. Those that pitted just prior to one of the two stage breaks, led by Byron, made the right call.
It almost backfired at the end, however. Byron had pitted 24 laps to go putting his Chevy on the edge of the fuel window. With five laps to go Byron was forced to slow while Bell, who won Stage 1, and had pitted a few laps later made a late race charge getting past first Alex Bowman in third, then Ty Gibbs who was second with three to go.
“I feel like I made a lot of mistakes in the last ten laps,” Byron said. “Just little micro errors. Christopher was really fast there on the longer runs. But this sport is just so hard. It’s so difficult to week in and week out show up and have fast cars.”
Bell tried to catch Byron on the final laps but came up short as Byron crossed the line .692 of a second.
“I mean, obviously once I got to him, it was going to be tough to pass him, but just needed a couple of mistakes,” Bell said. “William has been really, really good on the road courses, and he was flawless when it mattered today.”
Gibbs held on for third and Bowman was fourth. Last year’s COTA winner Tyler Reddick was fifth.
“Yeah, we were just a little too loose in the right-handed corner,” Gibbs said. “I just wish we were a little tighter, but we did a really good job today.”
Byron led a race high 42 of the 68 laps. Ross Chastain led the second most laps on the day, 10, and was second until he followed Byron into the pits for the final green flag stops of the day. A slower stop for Chastain and a 3 second faster stop by Bowman who pitted a lap earlier than Byron and Chastain, saw Chastain come out of the pits behind Bowman, while Bowman slotted in behind Byron. Byron then cycled back to the lead as Martin Truex Jr. was the last to pit with 18 to go.
Byron has now won two of the last three road courses in the NASCAR Cup series and has his first win at COTA to go with his first Daytona 500 win to open the season. In addition, Hendrick Motorsports has gone to victory lane in three of the first six races in the NASCAR Cup series so far this season. It was also a perfect weekend for Hendrick Motorsports after Kyle Larson won the NASCAR Xfinity race on Saturday at the same track.
“I feel like when we’re on, we’re firing on all cylinders,” Byron said. “Whether it’s pit road, strategy, calls on top of the pit box for changes in the car.”
AJ Allmendinger was sixth, Chastain seventh with Chris Buescher was the lone Ford in eighth. Kyle Busch who spun out during Stage 2 rallied for ninth while Truex rounded out the top 10.
Among those who had an alternate pit strategy was Denny Hamlin who won Stage 2. He finished 14th. Other notables: Shane van Gisbergen was 21st without first gear in his Chevy, Kamui Kobayashi was spun twice after contact and finished 30th.
Micheal McDowell was the only car scored with a DNF after his Ford lost power steering. He tried to wrestle the car around for several laps but had to retire from the race with 17 laps to go.
NASCAR heads to Richmond Raceway next Sunday night. Kyle Larson is the defending winner of that race.
RACE RESULTS
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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