Nathan Byrd on Difference Between Xfinity & Trucks Plus 2025 Plans

Nathan Byrd has made five starts in NASCAR this season with one more scheduled at Phoenix Raceway with Young’s Motorsports in the Craftsman Truck Series.

The Byrd name is not a new name in racing, as Nathan is the fourth generation involved in motorsports. Before the race weekend, Frontstretch‘s Jared Haas caught up with Byrd.

You can either watch the interview or read it below.

Jared Haas, Frontstretch: What type of racing have you done in your career so far?

Nathan Byrd: I would say all kinds. I’ve driven a wide variety of formula cars, different sports cars/touring cars on the lower end, but not like IMSA level quite yet. A wide variety of short track cars, super modified, sprint car, silver crown, midget, focus midget, Pro Late, modified, and as well as some NASCAR stuff with Trucks and Xfinity. I’ve driven a lot of different race cars.

Haas: What’s the biggest change in jumping from a different series into a stock car?

Byrd: Well, I guess it depends on what you’ve driven beforehand. If you’re a Shane van Gisbergen, who’s driven Supercars for years and years, that’s going to be less of a transition than if you were an open-wheel, formula car [driver] like myself.

Even short track stuff like high horsepower, you’re going to have a different level of weight to grip.

How I like to think about the weight-to-grip ratio is NASCAR, especially the Xfinity car, is on the far end of the very high weight, very low grip versus like something I’m driving at Circuit of the Americas right now, testing and developing a new formula car. These things are on the far other end of the spectrum, which is very low weight, very high grip. And it’s less horsepower, but every car driven on the limit is going to have rear slip.

That’s basically depending [on] where you’re coming from. I’m coming from a wide variety of cars, but my professional training is in the formula car realm.

I’m going from a car that does everything that you want to a stock car that does almost nothing that you want, at least at the rate that you would like it to be compared to what you’re used to.

You just have to adjust to the car. It does everything slower and you have to adjust your driving inputs accordingly in order to not fly off the edge of the track, into the wall or hit someone. It’s definitely a learning curve coming from the open-wheel, formula car world especially.

Haas: Can you tell the subtle differences between the Xfinity car and the Trucks? You’ve done a handful of starts. The climb up from Xfinity to Cup has been a challenge for some Xfinity regulars, but some Truck regulars have succeeded in going straight into the Cup Series. Is there a difference between those two cars driving wise?

Byrd: Yeah, having a lot of downforce experience, it definitely makes sense to me that guys are having an easier time going from a truck, which seems to be more reliant on downforce than a Xfinity car. From my understanding, it is a just higher-grip car that has a bit more downforce working. It makes sense that guys that are more comfortable with the higher downforce car have the easier jump than a Xfinity driver who is used to less downforce, more slip and less cornering speed.

Then, they go into a Cup car, and instead of it coming down in terms of cornering speed, it’s actually, ‘Oh, wait, I have to push harder. I have to drive deeper. I have to trust the car’s grip more.’

For me, it’s been the opposite. I have to come down from super high cornering speeds in order to realize. This is only how much grip I have versus going from a Xfinity car to a Cup car, where it’s like, ‘Oh wait, actually, I have more grip.’

That’s why Cup drivers get some practice, like Ross Chastain. I coached him up at Indy [Indianapolis Motor Speedway] on the road course. He was driving a Porsche that I was driving. The Porsche just breaks corners and accelerates a lot more efficiently than a stock car that he’s used to. He actually had to search and explore and get himself to trust the car’s grip more, which is something that one of those Truck guys wouldn’t have to do as much compared to an Xfinity guy. It just depends on what car you have more experience.

I can feel the subtle differences between a Xfinity car and a truck, although I haven’t driven the same track with those two different cars. The only times I’ve driven the Xfinity car have been in essentially hard environments like New Hampshire — a hard-breaking oval — Portland and [the] Charlotte ROVAL. It’s not really a comparison.

I haven’t driven a truck on a road course yet. I’ve only driven a truck at Kansas, which is basically no braking. If I had to speculate in a Xfinity car, I probably would be braking, and I would feel that difference in cornering speed and having to slow down a bit more. I would feel the side force not stick in the Xfinity car as it does in the truck. That’s what the guys explained to me, that there’s more side force in the truck, which is why I can run the cushion a bit more, a bit faster in the truck compared to the Xfinity car.

But I haven’t had that firsthand experience. From the experience I have had at different tracks, I can sort of converge them in my mind and realize there is a difference in the downforce and the grip levels between the two cars.

Haas: If you’ve had a keen eye in NASCAR back in 2020, James Davison had Byrd on his car. Give us a little bit more insight about your family history. Your family had a background in IndyCar and transitioned to NASCAR in recent years.

Byrd: My family, all the way back to my great grandma, she owned stock cars in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was very rare for women at that time.

Then, my grandpa kind of took up the mantle from there and started into the short track scene with Rich Vogler and took Vogler to our first Indianapolis 500 in 1985.

Since 1985, we’ve had 22 entries between my grandpa, my uncle and my dad, with the most recent one being my dad with Davison. Since I wanna say it was either 2020 or 2021 was our final entry until, ideally, I’m going to be the 23rd entry in the Indy 500.

In that phase, I was still coming up through go-karts and my early formula car years. When we also had Davison, we started dabbling in the stock car world, especially the Cup Series with Rick Ware Racing, and there’s some Xfinity stuff too.

We started dabbling in that world because of the nature of our family business. We’re able to make some trade deals to make things work out and justify the increased expenditure in racing.

That’s basically kind of how we’ve transitioned from doing the Indy 500, which is still the goal for me. Now, we have some roots, races and experience in the NASCAR world.

We’re working with Motorsports Management International [MMI] currently just to help shore up the gaps of knowledge in the NASCAR world in order to make deals and know people. We’ve relied on MMI pretty heavily to help us on that side of things. That’s how I’ve been getting introduced more and more into the world of NASCAR.

Haas: Do you have plans set for next season? Are we going to see you back in more NASCAR? What other types of racing are we going to see you at?

Byrd: This year was really heavy on the short track side of things with Silver Crown, sprint cars [and] midgets, and [I] did a focus midget near the end of the year as well. Super modifieds, probably even going to tack on a Pro Late [Model] race at Irwindale Speedway, since we heard that they’re shutting down.

We had a lot of short track stuff this year, which was kind of a makeup for last year. We didn’t really get that much short track stuff at all, which is kind of disappointing, but we got a lot of road course cars in the form of sports car stuff.

This year has been a lot of short tracks and obviously the NASCAR debuts and things like that, getting some of those [races] like at Phoenix. I’ve done some formula car stuff as well this year.

Next year is going to be probably more NASCAR, hopefully more short tracks, or at least just as many short tracks as we’ve done this year.

Hopefully, [I can] add winged sprint cars; all the short-track stuff that I’m doing is on pavement.

Not really interested in dabbling into the dirt side of things quite yet, although I’ve already done some dabbling. That’s basically the plan — hopefully, more NASCAR and more short tracks, and then just continue developing and working on projects like the one we’re working on at COTA with other teams like Legacy Autosport, who I do some of my short track racing with.