‘People Don’t Understand’: William Byron’s Two-Step Process on How NASCAR Can Gain Popularity With Younger Fans

Jerry Bonkowski | 10/04/2025
NASCAR Cup Series driver William Byron (24) during qualifying for the Shrines Children’s 500 at Phoenix Raceway.

Virtually every young driver in the NASCAR Cup has theories or suggestions on how NASCAR can improve its engagement with younger fans. But few have the actual experience of going from a fan to an e-sports racer (such as iRacing) and then on to an actual full-fledged NASCAR Cup driver, as William Byron.

The two-time back-to-back Daytona 500 winner (2024 and 2025) is a walking, talking example of a fan who ultimately went from racing on a computer screen to racing against the best of the best for one of the top teams in the sport, namely, Hendrick Motorsports.

The Athletic spoke to Byron recently and asked him what NASCAR must do to attract younger fans and take the sport to the next level of popularity.

“We need to become way more current in the landscape of social media and exposure,” Byron said. “Looking at my generation and being around my friends, they would love to be able to follow the race more easily for their favorite drivers.”

Byron cited the way Formula One’s interface within its various apps allows fans to become more engaged and involved.

“Formula One has a really good interface for their apps, like how you follow Lewis Hamilton or how you follow Charles (Leclerc),” he mentioned. “We need to have a way to easily get to that, like the in-car cameras.”

Byron: Driving a NASCAR Isn’t An Easy Thing to Do

Byron noted that younger race fans may take for granted how difficult racing a stock car can be.

“People don’t understand how difficult it is to drive these cars,” The HMS driver stated. “They think, ‘Oh, you’re just turning left at 80 percent of the tracks,’ and it’s like, ‘No, you’re on the edge. You’re literally fighting the car on the edge, like if you were driving on ice.’

“So we just have to educate people and do that in a current way. There’s plenty of personalities in this garage, it’s just trying to show it and we’ve got to do it in more current ways.”

Post Edited By: Srijan Mandal
nascar William Byron

About the author

Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski is a veteran sportswriter who has worked full-time for many of the top media outlets in the world, including USA Today (15 years), ESPN.com (4+ years), Yahoo Sports (4 1/2 years), NBCSports.com (8 years) and others. He has covered virtually every major professional and collegiate sport there is, including the Chicago Bulls' six NBA championships (including heavy focus on Michael Jordan), the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX-winning season, the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs World Series championships, two of the Chicago Blackhawks' NHL titles, Tiger Woods' PGA Tour debut, as well as many years of beat coverage of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA for USA Today. But Jerry's most notable achievement has been covering motorsports, most notably NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA drag racing and Formula One. He has had a passion for racing since he started going to watch drag races at the old U.S. 30 Dragstrip (otherwise known as "Where the Great Ones Run!") in Hobart, Indiana. Jerry has covered countless NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races and championship battles over the years. He's also the author of a book, "Trading Paint: 101 Great NASCAR Debates", published in 2010 (and he's hoping to soon get started on another book). Away from sports, Jerry was a fully sworn part-time police officer for 20 years, enjoys reading and music (especially "hair bands" from the 1980s and 1990s), as well as playing music on his electric keyboard, driving (fast, of course!), spending time with Cyndee his wife of nearly 40 years, the couple's three adult children and three grandchildren (with more to come!), and his three dogs -- including two German Shepherds and an Olde English Bulldog who thinks he's a German Shepherd.. Jerry still gets the same excitement of seeing his byline today as he did when he started in journalism as a 15-year-old high school student. He is looking forward to writing hundreds, if not thousands, of stories in the future for TheSportsRush.com, as well as interacting with readers.

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