DARLINGTON, S.C. — William Byron saw Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson and Trackhouse Racing driver Ross Chastain ahead of him late in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race.
Byron made sure he was prepared for the fireworks he thought could happen at Darlington Raceway.
Boom!
Byron moved in front when Chastain and Larson wrecked while racing for the lead on a restart with six laps left, then held off Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick in overtime to win the Goodyear 400.
“We talked about it under the caution,” Byron said of a potential dustup. “I didn’t think that they would wreck, but obviously it happened and we rolled on by.”
Chastain and Larson have raced each other tooth-and-nail this season, with incidents impacting potential wins at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway and Delaware’s Dover Motor Speedway even before the circuit headed to the 1.37-mile South Carolina track “Too Tough To Tame.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist — Byron, 25, is taking college courses at Liberty University — to know the two might tangle again.
It was a measure of retribution for Byron, who was two laps from victory in this race year a year ago until he was shoved out of the way by eventual winner Joey Logano, the 2022 Cup Series champion.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Byron said. “Things have a way of working out.”
He got the Hendrick No. 24 Chevrolet away cleanly from Harvick’s Ford on the green-white-checkered finish for his third win this season and the seventh of his Cup Series career.
Harvick was second and Hendrick’s Chase Elliott third, the Georgia driver’s best finish since returning to racing a month ago after missing six races due to breaking his left leg while snowboarding.
Brad Keselowski was fourth in another Ford, followed by Bubba Wallace in the highest-finishing Toyota. Harrison Burton, Kyle Busch, Justin Haley, Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher rounded out the top 10.
It was the 100th win for Hendrick’s No. 24 car and the organization’s first victory at Darlington since seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson won the 2012 race.
It looked like Larson or current series points leader Chastain had the strongest cars and figured to be there at the end. Instead, Chastain was alongside Larson during a restart and admitted trying to squeeze his competitor against the wall in the second turn. Both wound up wrecking.
Larson finished 20th and Chastain, who punched Noah Gragson in a pit-road confrontation a week earlier at Kansas Speedway, was 29th.
“I wanted to squeeze him, I wanted to push him up, we’ve been trading back and forth all day. I wanted to push him up for sure,” Chastain said.
Larson’s crew chief, Cliff Daniels, angrily said on the radio, “Three races he’s taken us out of.”
“Children,” said TV analyst and NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Bill Elliott, Chase’s father. “You put them in a sandbox together and they can’t play.”
Larson moved into the lead when Denny Hamlin went to the pits with 30 laps remaining and was in prime position for victory until tangling with Chastain.
“He doesn’t have to be that aggressive,” winning owner Rick Hendrick said of Chastain. “He’s going to make a lot of enemies.”
Martin Truex Jr. started from the pole position and led 145 of the first 151 laps before he was clipped by Chastain at the end of the second stage. Chastain led 93 laps but has not won since an April 2022 victory at Talladega, a stretch of 39 races.
The Chastain-Larson collision wasn’t the only one of the day.
Truex turned into Logano while the two were running third and fourth with less than 15 laps left, touching off an eight-car crash and scrambling the field. That followed an earlier dustup when Erik Jones, who won the Southern 500 at Darlington last September, had his right rear tire spin off the car on the 193rd lap and immediately got sideways, with those behind him having almost no chance to escape the trouble.
Those caught up behind Jones included Gragson, Austin Dillon, Ty Gibbs, Daniel Suarez and Ryan Newman, who was competing in his first race since the 2021 season finale as he returned to NASCAR with Rick Ware Racing.
Ahead on the schedule is NASCAR’s All-Star weekend at revamped North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina. The 0.625-mile track was a regular on the schedule from 1949 through 1996 before the Cup Series left. But after a spirited effort to revive the rural track, owner Speedway Motorsports will host the event this year as part of NASCAR’s 75th anniversary season celebration.
AP photo by Matt Kelley / William Byron’s pit crew celebrates after he drove the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 Chevrolet to victory Sunday at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.Hope for Kurt Busch
Kurt Busch hasn’t given up hope of competing in the Cup Series again.
Busch has been sidelined since sustaining a concussion during a crash in qualifying last summer at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway. He announced in October that he’d be stepping out of his ride at 23XI Racing to continue his recovery.
“I’m feeling much better,” Busch said Sunday. “The improvements that I’ve made have been tremendous.”
He was at Darlington Raceway alongside Ricky Craven, who finished 0.002 second ahead of Busch in 2003 at the track. That set the record for the closest finish in NASCAR history, matched only by Johnson’s victory over Clint Bowyer at Talledega in 2011.
Busch thought his decision last fall gave him time to continue improving without the pressure of rushing to return for the season-opening Daytona 500. He said it also gave him the chance to solidify and enhance sponsorship opportunities for the No. 45 car — now driven by Tyler Reddick — for team owners early in the schedule.
Busch is the 2004 Cup Series champion and has won 34 races on the top-tier circuit. He has been named one of NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers of all time, a group that was recognized during Darlington’s throwback weekend.
Busch, 44, said the program has given him space to get fully healthy.
“The toughest part is my body’s fatigue, going through physical therapy,” he said. “Having a day on, day off, things in my body are much more sensitive.”
Busch said he has worked in a racing simulator, recently drove a powerboat at a sponsor event and is “pushing” to return.
Added Busch: “It’s all little things that keep adding up.”