DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Blaney sat next to William Byron after the Clash as they answered questions last Wednesday about their second- and third-place finishes in the exhibition event.
The conversation turned to this weekend’s Daytona 500.
“Try to see if we can make William not win one,” Blaney quipped.
Byron responded: “You’re pretty good there.”
Blaney was having none of it: “You won the last two. Shut up.”
Byron can’t escape the fact that he will attempt to go back-to-back-to-back in the Daytona 500. Just how hard is a three-peat?
Well, no driver has ever won three consecutive Daytona 500s in the 67-year history of the race.
So can he win three in a row when he races Sunday in the sport’s biggest event?
“I hope so,” Byron told me.
Can William Byron achieve the 3-peat in Daytona?
The Hendrick Motorsports driver doesn’t have any secret recipe for how to win the Daytona 500. Considering that he didn’t finish in the top 20 in his first six Daytona 500 starts before winning in 2024, he doesn’t profess to be an expert on how to win this event.
Last year, he entered the last lap running ninth when the cars ahead of him crashed. Then he slipped by on the outside and won a race that was as much a surprise to him and his team as anyone.
It’s not like he is going to watch a tape of how to go avoid a wreck and gain eight spots on the final lap.
“I don’t know that I’ve watched the 500s back because it just plays out the way it does,” Byron noted.
So the plan is similar to other times he has prepared for the Daytona 500:
“Part of it’s unpredictable, but just go down there and have a good speedweek,” Byron said about the Wednesday-to-Sunday schedule for the event. “And even if we don’t have a good speedweek, it doesn’t necessarily matter for Sunday. But just learn what I need to throughout the week, drafting, make good decisions.
“[I need to] learn from what I did in Talladega in the fall, where we were kind of in the hunt and just be a little bit better on superspeedways.”
Learning the draft is a constant evolution, as drivers learn more about how the current version of the Cup car handles the air.
William Byron said that he’ll be making smart decisions at this weekend’s 500.
Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta are the three tracks where NASCAR has to restrict horsepower from its usual 670 or 750 to about 550 horsepower in order to keep the cars from getting airborne. That results in them racing in tight packs with little reaction time if someone gets sideways in front of them. And because they are in such a pack, the airflow from the car in front sucks the car from behind toward it, which in turn pushes the car ahead.
So having a good push at the right moment can be key to winning.
Some would argue that, since Byron has two Daytona 500 trophies, he could be content in pushing a teammate to the win if he has no chance to win himself.
“I’m going to do whatever is the smartest decision on the track,” Byron said. “If they’re in front of me, and I don’t have really a better move to kind of get myself in a position, then you’re going to push them forward and try to win the race for them.
“It just kind of depends. I feel like in drafting, you have to just kind of position yourself and sometimes the best move is just to push.”
Some drivers go entire careers winning dozens of races but never the Daytona 500. Byron has 16 career victories, including the two in the sport’s biggest race.
“I never feel like I put too much pressure on it anyways, but I always want to go down there and have a good showing and everything like that,” Byron said. “[Having two wins] doesn’t change anything.”
The only thing having those two wins does require is for Byron to find space in his home to display them. He has them in the same room, but they aren’t together in any sort of “I’ve won two Daytona 500s” trophy case.
“A lot of my trophies … I just kind of put away where I don’t see them a lot,” Byron revealed to me. “But those are cool ones for sure. They’re in the same room, but they’re not next to each other. They’re not like a shrine that I look at every day, that’s for sure.”
One thing different for Byron this year: Chevrolet has a new body style that theoretically should help them in the draft.
Byron knows that this year’s new playoff format could change the trajectory of his season.
“I hope it’s better for us pushing,” Byron said. “We’ve needed that for a while. We’ve been more of the weak link on superspeedways for a little bit now.
“So hopefully that helps us get a little bit better, and hopefully we can just push better.”
There’s that hope that Byron is known to have. He’s got hope the cars run better and the hope he can find himself in a position to capitalize at the finish. He has led just 14 laps in the two Daytona 500s he has won.
The winner has a couple of full days of media following the victory, and Byron hopes to experience that again, even if it can impact the performance the next couple of weeks.
“It’s kind of a whirlwind, which is fun because you just won a huge race,” Byron said. “So that adrenaline, those emotions, kind of carry you through, but you’re behind. So you have to get caught up and make sure your team’s ready for the next race and ready for the next month.”
Last year, Byron did just that as he won the regular-season title. This year, NASCAR did away with winning being an automatic qualifier for the playoffs, so Byron knows that, while the Daytona 500 winner will have a jump on the field, a driver still needs to finish in the top 16 in regular-season points to make the postseason.
“The first time around, we were kind of struggling for a month and trying to find our footing and never felt like we’re going to and then we were able to win a race,” Byron told me. “It’s just one of those things. It doesn’t change anything.
“Especially this year with the new format, it’s not going to mean that you’re in the playoffs or anything like that, so you’ve just got to keep pushing.”
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