William Byron celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 20, 2022. Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
William Byron is hopeful that this weekend’s return visit to Atlanta Motor Speedway may kickstart another solid run to close out the regular season.
His victory in March and a second at Martinsville Speedway only three weeks later made the Hendrick Motorsports driver the first multi-race winner of the 2022 season.
But after that April 9 win at Martinsville, Byron didn’t score another top-10 for eight weeks – a ninth-place run two months later on the Sonoma road course. That finish – three weeks ago – is his only top-10 now in a span of 10 races.
A good showing this weekend at Atlanta would go a long way toward righting the ship for the 24-year-old. And there’s plenty of reason to believe that’s possible. Byron says he’s become a student of big track racing and concedes the right mindset really helps.
His results would indicate as much. Byron earned his career first his NASCAR Cup Series win at Daytona International Speedway in the August 2020 regular season finale.
Seven of his 25 career top five NASCAR Cup Series finishes – plus a pair of Xfinity Series wins – have come on tracks at least 2.5 miles.
“When I was starting out, like going back to the first truck race on a superspeedway, I was really nervous, timid, didn’t make a lot of moves and I ended up getting into someone else’s crash,” Byron acknowledged Saturday.
“So I was just like, ‘man, this just doesn’t make any sense. I feel so timid. I feel so nervous the whole time’. So I just started to take a more aggressive approach to try and learn. Knowing that the outcome might be the same – maybe I’m going to crash or whatnot at the end of the race – but at least I’ve learned something throughout the race and don’t feel like I’m just a passenger in the pack.
“I hated that feeling of just feeling like I was going to ride around and hope for the best. That didn’t sit well for me so I just took a more aggressive approach.”
Byron will start Sunday’s Quaker State 400 from the 13th starting position after Saturday’s qualifying session was rained out.
NASCAR Cup Series
Atlanta Motor Speedway – Hampton, GA
Quaker State 400 – July 10, 2022
Sunday’s Starting Line Up
1. Chase Elliott
2. Ross Chastain
3. Kyle Larson
4. Tyler Reddick
5. Austin Cindric
6. Ryan Blaney
7. Daniel Suarez
8. Alex Bowman
9. Martin Truex, Jr.
10. Kevin Harvick
11. Chris Buescher
12. Michael McDowell
13. William Byron
14. Chase Briscoe
15. Christopher Bell
16. Denny Hamlin
17. Joey Logano
18. Cole Custer
19. Kyle Busch
20. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
21. Kurt Busch
22. Aric Almirola
23. Ty Dillon
24. Justin Haley
25. Erik Jones
26. Austin Dillon
27. Harrison Burton
28. Todd Gilliland
29. Noah Gragson
30. Corey LaJoie
31. Brad Keselowski
32. Bubba Wallace
33. Garrett Smithley
34. Cody Ware
35. B.J. McLeod
36. Landon Cassill
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