A banner day for William Byron’s Hendrick Motorsports team on Sunday in New Hampshire not only led the way for the organization but also brought a sense of accomplishment to the group.
Byron finished third, sandwiched between three fast Fords from Team Penske and Wood Brothers Racing. It was not only a career-best finish for Byron at New Hampshire, but the first time the No. 24 team has finished inside the top 10 at the track in eight starts.
“It was a good day,” Byron said with a smile afterward. “It was a good day overall. I felt like a lot of things that we’ve been building on the short tracks were working for us. This place has always been tricky for me in the Cup car. I feel like the other series were good, but this place in the Cup car has been tough on us. So, yeah, just trying to build little bits here and there, and I just felt like we could really stack runs together.
“We had a couple of weak runs in Stage 1 and the start of Stage 2, but then once we kind of got that out of the way, I felt like we were really strong. The Penske guys were super-fast. They were kind of in another zip code. But I felt like, other than that, we were really competitive and just really proud of our team. If we can just build on this, I think all of our short tracks are starting to come together.”
Byron’s previous best finish at the flat one-mile track was 11th, which he achieved twice. But he and crew chief Rudy Fugle brought a dramatically improved package for the start of the second round of the postseason, which saw Byron lead practice in single-car speed and then qualify fifth.
In both stages, Byron finished third. His average running position in Sunday’s race was 4.5, which was second-best to race winner Ryan Blaney (3.4).
“Absolutely,” Fugle said of it being a ‘mission accomplished’ type day for the team. “In the five years since I’ve been here, we haven’t done well at all, and this is the first top 10, first top five. Just a solid weekend overall. We’ve been building on some things since (Kyle Larson’s) test in Gateway, and really have to give a shout-out to Kyle and Cliff [Daniels], and the whole company, to put a lot of work into that test. We’ve been working on that slowly at the short tracks; I think we have a better package. We still have more to chase to get those Penske and Wood Brothers cars. But for this place, it’s a huge step in the right direction (for us.).”
The performance came a day after Byron admitted the first three-race round in the postseason was a “shock” to his team. Although they easily advanced given their points position, the performances and race results were not up to standard.
Sunday was the team’s first top-10 finish in four playoff races. Byron leaves the weekend with a 47-point advantage on the cutline. It is not breathing room, according to the driver. Fugle, however, believes the team now has momentum back on their side.
“This was the toughest race in this round,” he said. “I could see it just being an average day and not having any momentum going into the next races. We always look forward to going to Kansas; I do fully know that Kansas could be tougher than normal. We have to keep learning from our mistakes from Darlington, which we think we’ve done, and we have to go prove it next week. But to get a good start on this round, it does give us a lot of confidence and comfort to race freely. It’s always a math calculation of how many points you need to get to the next round. You either win or math, and we got a really good start on it today. So, we can go race free, be aggressive, and do what we need to do to try to win the next few weeks.”