NASCAR Takeaways: Daytona 500 Winner William Byron Snaps Drought At Iowa

NEWTON, Iowa — William Byron snapped a 21-race winless streak on Sunday afternoon.

While a 21-race drought isn’t something to sweat over too much, when that last victory was the Daytona 500, there could be a feeling of what could be wrong.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver stretched his fuel for the win, once when he certainly needed help after pitting with 144 laps remaining at Iowa Speedway. Knowing he could only run 110 to 115 green-flag laps, Byron took advantage of 50 laps under caution in those final 144 laps on the 0.875-mile oval.

“We needed to win a race,” Byron said. “I feel like we deserved to win a race based on how we’ve run all year, and it just wasn’t happening.

“I felt like we had to learn how to do basically everything right, and things were still not really working out in our favor. This is just a big relief to have one kind of go our way. We’ve just been running so well this year. This is going to be a big momentum boost for our team.”

Winning a fuel-mileage race possibly erased some demons for Byron and his team, as he saw a couple of potential victories vanish when he ran out of gas late in a race during the summer.

Byron, who had won in NASCAR’s feeder truck and Xfinity series at the track, had finished second in the inaugural Cup race at Iowa a year ago.

Takeaways from a race where Byron was followed across the finish line by Chase Briscoe, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney and Ryan Preece.

Byron Back Atop Standings

With the victory, Byron went from four points behind teammate Chase Elliott atop the series point standings to 18 points ahead of Elliott and 45 points ahead of teammate Kyle Larson.

Three races (Watkins Glen, Richmond and Daytona) remain in the regular season, and the winner of the regular-season title earns 15 additional playoff points, while second is worth 10 and third is worth eight.

Playoff points give a driver a better chance to advance in the playoffs if they don’t win a race in the three-race playoff rounds.

“I respect my teammates a ton,” Byron said. “I feel like we learn a lot from one another. We all have kind of our unique driving styles, but we have all kind of morphed into being able to drive this car really well.

“It’s just cool to see us all compete, and hopefully us on [my team] can put three good weeks together on that end of things.”

As far as the playoff bubble, there are currently three spots open for drivers without wins. Tyler Reddick has a 122-point edge on the cutoff, while Alex Bowman (+63) and Chris Buescher (+23) are inside the playoff bubble with Ryan Preece (-23) on the outside looking in.

Keselowski Comes Up Short

Brad Keselowski needs to win to make the playoffs and appeared to be in the best position midway through the race to control the event.

But with all the caution flags, his pit strategy didn’t pan out as he needed some longer runs. He finished third on a day when he led 68 laps. 

“When you’re in traffic, you just have to use the car harder. And by the end, everybody’s tires were just garbage because we had fought in traffic for so long,” Keselowski said. “The caution sequence and the way the race played out was not very favorable for us.

“We had good pace and thought we executed pretty well.”

Keselowski was a little frustrated.

“All the wrecks changed the dynamic of the race,” Keselowski said. “It was a really sloppy race for the field today.

“And it shifted it to where severely alternate strategies won the race. … I’ve run into people, so pot calling kettle black, but I don’t understand why guys wreck for 20th. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

Briscoe Backs Up Pole

Briscoe won his sixth pole of the season, but in his last three races where he started from the front, he had finished 17th, 23rd and 18th.

He backed up his being the fastest in qualifying by leading 81 laps and finishing second, his best finish of the season in races where he started from the pole.

Briscoe didn’t have to save as much fuel as Byron, but with all the cautions and a track where parts of it were repaved in 2024 made it difficult to pass.

“Once I got [to Byron], he started taking my air and my car just kind of died as soon as that happened,” Briscoe said. “I thought I was going to be able to still be good, especially as he caught lapped traffic there. I still just didn’t quite have enough.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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