William Byron Wins Big In Atlanta, Georgia

William Byron led a race high 111 laps en route to his third career NASCAR win in the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 20. 

Byron established himself early by taking the win in stage one. Byron would hang around the front of the field for much of the race taking the lead for good with 10 laps to go. He would hold off hard chargers Bubba Wallace and Ross Chastain over the final laps for the victory. 

“That was fun,” Byron said after the race to Fox Sports’ Jamie Little, “The last few laps (I) was just trying to manage the gap to Bubba and not get too far out front.” 

The race was not a typical Atlanta race as a new layer of asphalt and increased banking in the turns (from 24 degrees to 28 degrees) led to “pack racing” similar to that of Daytona and Talladega. The race ended up producing 46 lead changes as a result, a record for Atlanta.

“It was so different,” Byron said after the race, “It was kind of a intermediate style (setup) with a little bit of speedway into it.”

Following the race, Byron made an appearance on the LU Convo stage on Wednesday along with Rick Hendrick, the team owner. Both gave praise to Liberty for their support of the race team and the students on campus. 

With the win, Byron became the third Hendrick Motorsports driver to win in the first five races this season joining Kyle Larson (Auto Club) and Alex Bowman (Las Vegas). Byron also clinched his spot in the NASCAR playoffs provided he remains in the top 30 in points and attempts to qualify for each of the remaining regular season races.

Lipowski is a sports reporter. Follow him on Twitter

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *