Did You Notice? … William Byron has etched his name in the NASCAR history books as just the fifth driver to win back-to-back Daytona 500s. Two of the other four drivers (Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough) went on to win 10 championships, 283 races and spots in the first NASCAR Hall of Fame class.
Byron now has five career wins on drafting tracks, the most for any NASCAR Cup Series driver since 2020. No one else has more than three during that span and only one driver (Ryan Blaney) has more than two.
Byron now has 10 wins in the last 73 Cup races along with back-to-back Championship 4 appearances, a resume that stacks up as well as any of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates or other Cup drivers in the field.
Most Cup Wins Since 2023
| Driver | Wins | Top 5s | Championship 4s (Titles Won) |
| William Byron (HMS) | 10 | 29 | 2 (0) |
| Kyle Larson (HMS) | 10 | 30 | 1 (0) |
| Ryan Blaney | 6 | 20 | 2 (1) |
| Denny Hamlin | 6 | 26 | 0 (0) |
| Christopher Bell | 5 | 25 | 1 (0) |
| Joey Logano | 5 | 18 | 1 (1) |
| Tyler Reddick | 5 | 22 | 1 (0) |
| Chase Elliott (HMS) | 1 | 18 | 0 (0) |
| Alex Bowman (HMS) | 1 | 12 | 0 (0) |
At age 27, Byron is poised to peak in the next couple of years, driving a legendary No. 24 car that won four Cup championships with Jeff Gordon. He’s a clean-cut, good-natured guy with a compelling Gen-Z type backstory (from iRacing to NASCAR) and who battled through adversity when his mom, Dana, was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. He’s the superstar the sport has been…
Zzzzzzz.
Zzzzzzz.
I’m sorry! Didn’t mean it. Wow, you fell asleep quickly.
Turns out the sport’s potluck Daytona 500 winner and would-be champion is making the rounds this week… and it feels like nobody knows. It’s a race he shouldn’t have won, they say. Hamlin’s 15-minute rant on Actions Detrimental, combined with Ryan Preece’s flip, have left the safety and the style of NASCAR racing as the central focus instead.
It’s how it’s always gone for Byron, whose 140,700 followers on X are just 15 percent the size of Elliott’s 931,000. He trails every HMS driver in that category: Blaney, Logano, Bubba Wallace… you name it. Even NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier, running for HMS-ish JR Motorsports, has about the same level of fan support.
It’s sad because Byron is talented. Oh-so-talented. While the focus is on Larson’s Indy/Charlotte double and perhaps a comeback season for Elliott, Byron could very easily run circles around them all with 6-8 wins of his own. Let’s not forget what happened when Gordon turned age 27: tying a modern-era record with 13 victories while winning the championship in a rout.
Yet Byron toils under the radar, the latest HMS driver to contract Jimmie Johnson syndrome: too vanilla latte when much of the fan base wants Busch Light. There’s spicier backstories if you look for them: Byron had a long-term relationship with Blaney’s sister, Erin, that ended last year. He’s had a run-in with Ryan since, along with flare-ups involving both Logano and Reddick in his younger days.
Those moments show what Johnson showed the second the camera turned off: Byron has personality! He’s not a robot! The guy is a huge NHL fan (Carolina), gives back to the community through a Charity Golf Tournament and occasionally still acts 27. The Liberty University sponsorship does attach well to a wholesome image but wholesome doesn’t always mean unappealing.
It doesn’t matter.
The San Antonio Spurs had a little mini NBA dynasty with four championships in eight years at the turn of the century. The team was filled with goody-two-shoes and role models who were pillars in their local community, along with two dominant Hall of Fame players (Tim Duncan and David Robinson) who had squeaky-clean personal resumes.
On paper, it was the type of good news team in a small market people should want to root for. In reality, their reign coincided with some of the lowest-rated NBA championship series in history. Fans just didn’t want to see it. People whine over no good news on TV but they line up in droves to see the latest on that murder, live from the scene on Action News 11. Hypocrisy can be a hard habit to break.
So are first impressions. That’s how it was for Johnson, entrenched early on as a simple, snoozer champion too many people didn’t feel connected with. It’s a sport built on the back of Dale Earnhardt, a type of blue-collar, aggressive mold that Ross Chastain fits right into. Kyle Busch, Joey Logano? They’ve got their fans but they’re also the type of drivers fans love to hate.
Byron? Oh, man, you’re sleeping again. That’s the emotion you see in him?
It’s not fair. But it’s a problem. For NASCAR’s sake, 2025 needs to be the year Byron breaks through along with his driving. I’m not saying the guy needs to punch a wall and be someone he’s not. But maybe step outside the box a bit? Show a little more flare, both on the racetrack and off?
The sport could sure use it.
Did You Notice? … Quick hits before taking off…
- NASCAR may well have had Parker Kligerman and Henderson Motorsports dead to rights. It may very well have been an illegal truck (we’ll see how the appeal goes this Thursday (Feb. 20). But stripping the most popular win of Speedweeks away, mere hours after it happened, tells you all you need to know about a Daytona that should have gone fantastic but has some vibes of the sport tripping over its own two feet. How awkward was it to see Kligerman, who had a phenomenal debut with the CW NASCAR Xfinity Series broadcast, have to reassert he won the race within the first three minutes of the show?
- Austin Cindric led more laps in the Daytona 500 (59) than his entire 2023 Cup season combined and nearly all of his 2022 campaign, when he won the darn thing. That’s gotta be a promising sign for a driver who starts this season knowing there needs to be progress in the No. 2 camp.
- I’m going to leave you with Chris Buescher’s view of the last two laps of this Daytona 500. Absolutely incredible, Days of Thunder vibes (except… all that got him a 10th-place finish, not the trophy).
Final two laps of the 500. My view pic.twitter.com/eh95f2BAoP
— Chris Buescher (@Chris_Buescher) February 18, 2025
Follow Tom Bowles on X at @NASCARBowles
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.
Nascar in the business of creating popularity. Nascar fix your own identity first.
The young, modern NASCAR driver is more or less bred for or optimized for the job. That means, in part, selecting someone inoffensive (read: boring) as to not risk negatively impacting sponsorship. These are not well-rounded adults with balanced lives. Byron started racing at 15. What else does he know other than racing? In a way, these guys are dull by design.
The HMS crew personalities:
Childlike: William Bryon with the oversized “kewl” hat.
Teenager: Kyle Larson with his whiney attitude.
College Frat Boy: Alex Bowman,… that voice.
Old Man: Chase Elliott with his mild-manner demeanor.
All in all, still like Hendrick Motorsports,… go Chase! 😎🤷🏼♂️🤣
If Byron is under the radar Chase is under water.
“NASCAR’s Boring William Byron Problem”
Looking at that table, it sure appears to me that the question should be can NASCAR’s Boring Hendrick Problem be fixed?
William Byron is a brand. He’s a marketing department creation designed to sell products. The image being projected is more important than the individual’s true persona.
A successful brand needs positive media exposure and a huge presence on social media. They need followers, likes, and trends. A brand needs some sort of charitable foundation because all the other brands have one. A brand follows the creative script written by the PR folks.
I think it’s the Hendrick organization and culture. They have a winning formula, no denying that, but their drivers are all – and have been – pretty dull and reserved. They seldom rock the boat or stand out, aside from being in the winner’s circle all the time. The last guy who did wasn’t around too long. He didn’t fit the mold, refused to calm down and act right, and was shown the door, talent or not.
But, they kept Kyle Larson.
Correction: They hired Kyle Larson.
I think that’s more because a driver made a mistake, learned from it, and has not regressed into that behavior since. If Larson was still running around saying that word, he’d be gone. They didn’t fire Busch right away either, as we’ve seen with him there is a pattern of behavior that is not changing. If he’d calmed down and represented the team as they expected him to things may have worked out differently. Perhaps he’d still be in the 5 car and Larson would’ve been in the 18 at Gibbs (although, more likely he’d have gone to the now defunct Stewart/Haas because Tony would have made room for Larson if he were available).
Byron=J-Jo!