William Byron kicked off the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season on a strong foot. He won the opening Daytona 500 and went on to secure victory at the Circuit of the Americas and subsequently at Martinsville. However, he slowed down into a slump over the summer and saw drivers like Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick leap ahead of him. This naturally casts one too many doubts over his abilities.
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Speaking to the press in Talladega, he opened up on how he viewed the criticisms surrounding his performances. He said, “It doesn’t bother me that people say or notice but it bothers me that we’re not that much different than any other team. If you look statistically, we have nine top-fives and 15 top-10s. That’s right in line with the other five or six guys that we’re racing.”
The #24 Chevrolet driver is currently on top of the playoff grid 34 points above the Round of 8 elimination line. His runner-up finish in Kansas ought to be thanked for this sweet spot. However, the last time he secured a top-5 finish before Kansas was back in August in Michigan. He has three finishes outside the top 25 in the last six races. The driver isn’t without awareness of the on-track dullness.
He continued, “Yes, we haven’t had a stellar season based on what we did last year. But we are still plugging along, we’re still finishing races up in the front in the top two or three. We just need to continue that. So yeah, it bothers me that we get treated a little bit differently because everyone this year for the most part has been pretty inconsistent.”
Is a false narrative being created around Byron?
One of the questions shot at the Hendrick Motorsports drivers was if people weren’t looking at Byron as a contender in the playoffs. The 26-year-old expressed that he felt like there was a microscope on his performances and that too much was being made of it.
“There’s a certain narrative out there of like, ‘Hey, they’re not good in the summertime.’ I don’t know if that’s completely true. I think we had certain races that were great in the summertime. And then we had certain weeks that we weren’t that great. But you could look across the whole garage that’s pretty consistent.”
That’s a lot of @WilliamByron signed diecasts. 👀 pic.twitter.com/WTK2os07B6
— Hendrick Motorsports (@TeamHendrick) October 1, 2024
What could be the reason that Byron is being scrutinized for downfalls that others aren’t? He is the driver of the iconic #24 Chevrolet Camaro, for one. Piloting a car driven by the legendary Jeff Gordon who secured four championships during his career automatically sets one to higher standards. This could potentially be why more is expected out of him.
He concluded that his crew works hard to bring fast cars to the track every week regardless of what part of the season it is. In his eyes, to be unfairly criticized on the face of such hard work isn’t something any driver would welcome.
