“Getting Really Wild There”: What Exactly Happened With William Byron At Atlanta?
· Yahoo Sports
It turned into a wreck-filled day for Hendrick Motorsports drivers in Atlanta, with William Byron and Kyle Larson taking the brunt of it. Larson owned up to the Stage 2 final-lap move when he ducked low into the lane of Shane van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevy, which sent him spinning into the outside wall, while Byron fell on his sword for the late-race crash that wiped out 11 cars and knocked him out of the fight.
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Despite riding inside the top five for most of the race and banking points with a P4 in Stage 1, Byronsaw his day end through a chain reaction. With three laps left in the scheduled 260-lap run, his No. 24 Chevrolet stepped out and brushed the outside wall.
As the Hendrick Motorsports driver lifted and tried to limp toward pit road, he got tagged by Austin Cindric, setting off a pileup that brought out the red flag and pushed the race into double overtime. Byron shouldered the blame, saying he was hunting for clean air, lost grip, and ended up along for the ride as the car snapped loose and he lost the steering.
Byron said, “No, no. Actually, I had damage from the wreck before, so my front end was kind of split a little bit, and I just didn’t have as much grip, so I was searching for air and got loose. So it was on me. I just messed up. I was pushing hard and had to kind of put myself in some weird spots based on the damage. But, yeah, nothing like that, no tire.”
“It was wild. Yeah, I mean, it was getting really wild there at the end. I felt like I was in a good spot to at least get a good finish. I don’t think I was going to be able to lead with the damage, but I was going to try to kind of mix myself in the top five, and I think I was like fifth or sixth right there. So it was crazy, but I mean, nothing out of the ordinary really.”
Byron explained that once the steering faded, every foot down the track made the car drift right. The No. 24 driver was only trying to scrub speed and nurse it back to pit road before things went sideways. He was easing lower, but with the race winding down, there was no margin left.
The earlier damage he mentioned stemmed from a mid-race stack-up on Laps 224 that swept up nine cars, including teammate Alex Bowman and eventual winner Tyler Reddick. Byron managed to soldier on at the time, but the earlier hit came back to bite him when it mattered most.
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