This Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway will be only the ninth race of the 36-race NASCAR Cup season, but TV analyst Kyle Petty is already on the William Byron bandwagon to be a strong contender for this year’s championship.
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Even with his heartbreaking runner-up finish in last Sunday’s Throwback Weekend race at Darlington Raceway. Byron absolutely dominated that race, including starting from the pole, led the first two stages, and led the most laps of any driver (led the first 243 laps of the event).
Yet that still wasn’t enough to catch race winner Denny Hamlin for the checkered flag.
Even though Hamlin has won the last two races and, like Byron, is still in search of his first Cup championship, Petty feels Byron is in it to win it when it comes to this year’s championship.
“I don’t think we’ve seen that dominant a performance, for that length of time, at a racetrack like Darlington,” Petty said on NASCAR Inside the Race LIVE. “The only one that came to mind was Ned Jarrett in 1965 won (the Southern 500 at Darlington) by 14 laps there.
“That’s a dominant performance, when you win by 14 laps.”
That’s an understatement.
Even though it was one of the toughest ways to lose a race, Petty remains bullish on Byron and his Hendrick Motorsports team going forward.
“Even though William and those guys gave that race away, even though they lost it and they basically gave it away, I think that’s a clear message that that team has shown up this year to contend again for the championship,” Petty said. “That was a performance like we’ve not seen in a pretty good while.”
While Byron left Darlington still in the points lead, for the record, though, Byron’s dominating performance there paled by comparison to the most dominating performance a driver has ever given in NASCAR annals.
Martin Truex Jr. led 392 of 400 laps (588 miles, the most miles ever led in a single Cup race in NASCAR history) to win the 2016 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
