William Byron has put together a string of top-10 finishes. But that awful finish to open the 2026 Chase for the NASCAR Cup has crushed him.
Look at Byron’s last four races, and one would think he’s faring well in the Chase. Byron’s average finish following the races at Gateway, Bristol, Kansas, and Las Vegas is a stellar 6.5. Yet he’s still 12th in the standings, thanks to his 37th-place finish at Darlington.
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Byron has also dominated the 1.5-mile races in 2026. He finished third at the first Las Vegas race, seventh at the first Kansas race, eighth at Texas, ninth at Charlotte, fourth at Chicagoland, seventh at the second Kansas race, and sixth at the second Las Vegas race.
Still, he’s way behind points leader Kyle Larson in the standings despite his dominance at the intermediates and his recent string of top-10 finishes.
Pat DeCola of NASCAR.com weighed in. When breaking down the Chase’s first five races, DeCola wrote that Byron “…remains 12th and 160 points back despite being the only driver to finish inside the top 10 in all seven 1.5-mile races this season.”
Darlington Disaster Still Looms Over William Byron
Byron’s 37th-place clunker at Darlington put him in an immediate hole. Byron accumulated five stage points, but finished with six points overall. Most of the drivers in the Chase were competitive at Darlington, compounding Byron’s misfortunes.
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What’s worse for Byron? He’s one of just eight drivers in the Chase to record a positive point differential in Chase points to regular-season points. During the regular season, Byron accumulated 25.62 points per race. Through the first five postseason races, that number climbed to 28.6, an increase of 2.98 per race.
Drivers Byron has outperformed throughout the Chase but remain ahead of him in the standings include Carson Hocevar (11th, plus-2.12/race), Ty Gibbs (8th, minus-4.71), Tyler Reddick (7th, minus-4.98), Ryan Blaney (5th, minus-3.48), and Denny Hamlin (2nd, minus-3.90).
This shows how devastating one back-of-the-pack finish can be for a driver, despite four straight top-10 finishes and a net positive of Chase points per race.
There Is Still A Silver Lining For Bryon
Bryon would need a string of bad finishes from drivers ahead of him to have a good chance of coming out of nowhere to win the championship. He would also need to keep accumulating top-10 finishes and land in the top five at the tracks where he performs his best.
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Charlotte is one of those tracks. In his last four traditional oval races at Charlotte, Byron has finished ninth (2026), second (2025), third (2024), and second (2023). That could play into his hands come Sunday afternoon if he can stay out of trouble.
While four straight top-10 finishes haven’t fixed the damage, Byron can at least keep remedying that damage on Sunday. He also ran well at Phoenix and Martinsville — where two of the final four races are — earlier this season. He took seventh at Phoenix and fifth at Martinsville.
Byron’s last two finishes at Talladega — another race on the remaining schedule — were washouts (25th at the 2025 fall race and 35th at the 2026 spring race).
Talladega will be the potential game-changer on the schedule. But if he bounces back there, combined with top-10 finishes at Charlotte, Phoenix, and Martinsville, then Byron could have an outside chance when NASCAR ultimately heads into the finale at Homestead-Miami.
This article was originally published on HEAVY
The post One Brutal Race Is Still Haunting William Byron’s NASCAR Chase appeared first on HEAVY.
