Since 2023, William Byron has been on a tear, winning races left and right. Now there’s another famous race up ahead in the schedule and as per Kevin Harvick, the #24 car will be one on Victory Lane at the end of it. The Cup Series champion also picked Denny Hamlin to win the pit stop competition and pole position.
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“I’m gonna pick William Byron because he did the tire test there and I think those guys are gonna have a little bit of the advantage and I’m gonna go a little bit further. I’m gonna say the #11 wins the pit stop competition and gets the pole and Ty Gibbs will win the qualifying race,” the 2014 Cup Series champion said on a recent episode of his Happy Hour podcast.
Kyle Larson would be one of the obvious choices had he not been starting from the back of the field as he will miss qualifying. Balancing NASCAR and the Indy 500 was always going to see some compromises and this is one of them. It will be Harvick taking his place in the #5 car for the pit stop competition but clearly, he believes that Hamlin will be better than the rest of the pack.
William Byron is a safe pick to win any race but the HMS star has not been that prolific in the previous editions of the exhibition. He has never won one of these or even finished in the top five.
Kevin Harvick’s pick has never finished top-five in All-Star race
The driver of the #24 car has taken part in five All-Star races and has an average finish of 11.8. He only has a couple of top-10 finishes, the best one being P7. He has also never finished outside of the top 20 so far in the event. Much like the Daytona 500, this could also be Byron’s first win in a major event but the 26-year-old wasn’t always a fan of the All-Star race.
“There were quite a few good years there, and then it kind of dulled out with the Gen-6; just had a rough patch there where they were trying a lot of stuff and it was really single-file at the end, and it was basically about who the good launch on the restart with 10-to-go,” he had said earlier. The race this weekend promises to be an intriguing affair and it will be interesting to see who takes the checkered flag on Sunday.
