Column: William Byron’s Seeking The Rare Back-To-Back Victories In The Daytona 500

Column By: REID SPENCER / NASCAR – DAYTONA BEACH, FL – Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron holds the esteemed distinction of arriving in Daytona Beach this week as the defending DAYTONA 500 champion.

Should he pull off the victory in Sunday’s race, it would mark only the fifth time in the race’s 67-year history that a driver has won consecutive DAYTONA 500s.

That short list includes the sport’s all-time winningest driver, Richard Petty (1973-74), three-time series champion Cale Yarborough (1983-84), along with Sterling Marlin (1994-95) and Denny Hamlin (2019-2020). In Marlin’s case, he is the only driver ever to earn his first two career wins in the Daytona 500.

Byron acknowledged the magnitude of the prospect of earning a second consecutive win in the Great American Race, but the 27-year-old Charlotte native seemed ultra-confident in his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team’s ability to give it a good try.

“It’s a huge deal,” Byron said Wednesday during DAYTONA 500 Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. “This race is very difficult, the way this is structured nowadays and the way the drafting tracks are with this package. It is tough but I feel like just having consistency on these drafting tracks like we have the last few times we’ve raced on them, we’ve been able to be really good at them. It’s just figuring out those last couple of things.”

Furthermore, Byron added, “I feel like having experienced it the way it was last year really changed my perspective on the race as a whole, in a good way, obviously. I feel that’s created some more motivation to get another one. This race, it’s a lifetime achievement. It’s something people reference everywhere you go.

“It’s something that the first time in my career I’ve had something like that. It makes it cool, it makes it more special, because you can tell people care about the race.”

Hamlin hopes to improve qualifying effort on superspeedways this year

Denny Hamlin is a three-time winner of the DAYTONA 500.

Only two other drivers have enjoyed more trips to Victory Lane in the Great American Race—Richard Petty with a record seven wins and Cale Yarborough with four.

Hamlin scored his victories in 2016, 2019 and 2020, but since the advent of the Gen 7 race car in 2022, Hamlin has found it more difficult to win superspeedway races.

Part of the problem, he says, lies in the inability to qualify at the front of the field.

“Where I really feel like we’ve lost results on superspeedways, it is because we qualify in the back, and once the track gets log-jammed two-by-two or three-by-three, there’s nowhere to go,” Hamlin said on Wednesday during DAYTONA 500 Media Day at Daytona International Speedway.

Hamlin said his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team has made qualifying at Daytona a focus this year. The top two spots on the grid were to be settled on Wednesday night, with the rest of the field ordered according to the results of Thursday night’s Duel at Daytona qualifying races.

“We always said that qualifying didn’t matter at Daytona and Talladega,” Hamlin said. “That was true when you could really make a lot of moves; now it is really, really difficult. What I am just looking for is progression.

“If you look at all of the Toyotas, and we qualify on average 25th on these types of tracks, can we get that better? Can we move that number to 20th or 18th or something in the right direction to give ourselves a better chance.”

Asked what a fourth DAYTONA 500 win might mean to him, Hamlin was at a loss to explain.

“I can’t answer that,” he said. “I tried to figure out what it would mean to win one, and I didn’t have any idea until I won one, and I didn’t have any idea, until after I won two, what two meant.

“It’s all really, really hard to put into words—but the attention when you come back, you are in an elite class of drivers that have won this multiple times. It is just one of those things that stays on your resume forever.”

Will 20th DAYTONA 500 start be a charmed one for Kyle Busch?

It took 20 attempts for Dale Earnhardt Sr. to win the DAYTONA 500. When he took the checkered flag in 1998, the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion ended a winless streak that had reached 59 races.

Likewise, Kyle Busch has been frustrated in his first 19 starts in the Great America Race. The two-time series champion hopes he’ll find the same magic Earnhardt did in his 20th attempt on Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Busch drives for Richard Childress Racing, just as Earnhardt did. Earnhardt failed to win a race in the season before his breakthrough victory at Daytona. Busch was winless last year, breaking a series-record streak of 19 straight seasons with at least one victory.

Busch, whose winless streak has reached 57 races, certainly knows the history.

“Twenty years of trying,” he said wistfully. “There was another storied racer of the past that won on his 20th try and that was a pretty big deal. He was a former RCR driver as well, so it’d certainly be nice to win that race and do it with RCR in the No. 8 Zone Chevrolet. So that would be pretty cool.”

Nor does Busch lack confidence in the quality of Childress’ superspeedway package.

“We’ve had really good speed being down here,” Busch said. “These guys build great (superspeedway) race cars, so when we go to Daytona, Atlanta, Talladega, we feel like those places are really good for us.

“We’ve got really good speed. I just told someone that it’s an 80 percent luck/20 percent skill race. Others would disagree, but I feel like you have to have a lot of things go your way, and you have to have the stars align. Being able to lead (after) the final pit stop is certainly going to put yourself in a really good position.”

Indy 500 champion aiming for a rare double at Daytona

Hugely popular four-time Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves showed up for Wednesday’s interviews with the national media smiling and optimistic. In other words, typical Castroneves spirit.

In his first official NASCAR Cup Series practice at the track—driving the No. 91 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet—Castroneves was second fastest among the rookies and 12th overall.

No matter how Castroneves fares in Wednesday night’s pole-qualifying or Thursday’s Duel 150, he has already been granted a starting position in Sunday’s race as an Open Exemption Provisional—a special designation Trackhouse Racing requested from NASCAR more than 90 days prior to the race.

The provisional, which NASCAR granted, is designed to give world-class drivers who are not full-time NASCAR competitors a chance to race. Only one such provisional is granted per event.

Castroneves conceded it’s all been a learning exercise, from negotiating directions from pit lane to the garage and how to properly pit, not to mention allowing more room between the car and pit wall than he is used to competing in IndyCar so the NASCAR crew has ample space to change the tires.

“Every step has been a learning process,” said Castroneves, who will also attempt to race in this year’s Indianapolis 500 in hopes of earning a historic, unprecedented fifth win.

“I’ve been watching a lot of in-car cameras,” he added. “Understanding a lot of the rules and being in touch with the guys (on the team) because the language is different. When you come out of the pits, normally they say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ but here they say, ‘Dig, dig, dig.’

“I know it sounds interesting or different; however, it’s completely the opposite of what I’m used to. So, I have to adapt. … all these little details, even though it’s a race car, it’s very different. When you are in a big race like this, every little detail matters, so I am trying to study all these details.”

Throughout his time with the NASCAR press Wednesday, the 49-year-old Castroneves reminded reporters that, although he is thoroughly enjoying his time at track and behind the wheel in this new quest, he is quite serious about the ultimate goal.

“At the end of the day, I’m not here just to cause attention,” Castroneves said. “I’m going to do everything I can to do the job.

“But the camera cannot see the smile behind my helmet. It will feel so good. Super excited.”