How William Byron Can Join Jeff Gordon in Elite NASCAR List With Win in Atlanta

William Byron has made it his hobby to break records and pile up wins behind the wheel of the #24 Hendrick Motorsports car. Over the coming Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta, he will have the chance to do so once again and join an elite list of drivers that includes his predecessor and racing legend, Jeff Gordon. The list is that of drivers who’ve won the first two opening races in a Cup Series season. Not surprisingly, it’s a short and powerful list at that.

The accomplishment of having back-to-back wins in the first two race weekends of the Cup Series has been done only by five drivers so far. Marvin Panch did it first in 1957 and Matt Kenseth, most recently in 2009. The #24 Chevrolet Camaro’s original hero Gordon did the feat in 1997, the year in which he won his second championship.

Now with Byron conquering the 2024 Daytona 500 in quite some fashion, he heads to Atlanta with winning odds of 12-1. The 1.5-mile track has posed some hefty challenges for drivers since its reconfiguration in 2021 to suit “superspeedway” racing. Fortunately for Byron, those challenges haven’t been of a tall order and he has won two of the last four races at the venue since.

Should he find his way to the victory lane again, not only will he join the ranks of Gordon and Kenseth, but also send a strong message across the grid of his purpose in the 34 races that will follow.

What could stop Willy B from breaking the record book at Atlanta?

The Fords have proven to be plenty strong in superspeedway racing over the last few years. In line with those performances, Team Penske superstar Joey Logano stands as a threat in Byron’s way. Having won the 2023 Ambetter Health 400, he is the favorite to win again on Sunday with odds of 10-1. More worryingly for Byron and Chevrolet, Ford’s entries led 366 of the 445 laps raced last year.

In Byron’s defense, he is the winningest driver in the Next-Gen car (9 victories) and one of the four drivers who’ve finished in the top five more than once in the reconfigured Atlanta track. He has continually proven his ability to trump pre-race predictions and beat the odds put against him. With that same nature in hindsight, there’s no saying that he can’t weave magic at Atlanta.  As Gordon rightly put it after Monday’s race, “He was already a superstar. He just went to another level of being a superstar.”