Nine races into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, it is no surprise to see the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team at the top of the points standings. Jeff Gordon made it a common occurrence during his driving career. More recently, especially over the last four years, William Byron has emerged as one of the best drivers in the sport. The current driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet has begun this season with a victory in the Daytona 500 for the second year in a row. Byron has also earned four top fives and six top 10s so far, giving him a 30-point lead on Denny Hamlin in the overall standings.
Getting a fast start to the season has become a familiar trend for Byron. He was fifth in points last year at this time and had won a series-leading three races. In 2022 and 2023, Byron had already won twice in each season by this point, and in 2021, his first season with current crew chief Rudy Fugle, Byron won the third race of the season and kicked off a top-10 streak that lasted another 10 races. The No. 24 team always sets the standard for early-season success.
However, none of Byron’s great starts to the season have resulted in a championship. Just as it is common to see him be fast out of the gate, he and the No. 24 team just as predictably cool off later in the season. It is not even a problem of Byron performing poorly in the playoffs. He has advanced to the Championship 4 for the past two seasons. But even in those instances, it never felt like the No. 24 team was at its best compared to earlier in the season.
The table below provides a more detailed breakdown of how Byron has performed during the first quarter of the past four seasons compared to how he ran during the remainder of the year.
| 2021 First Quarter | 2021 Last Three Quarters | 2022 First Quarter | 2022 Last Three Quarters | 2023 First Quarter | 2023 Last Three Quarters | 2024 First Quarter | 2024 Last Three Quarters | 2025 First Quarter | |
| Wins | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Top Fives | 2 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 4 | 9 | 4 |
| Top 10s | 7 | 13 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 18 | 6 | 15 | 6 |
| Laps Led | 138 | 287 | 482 | 264 | 385 | 631 | 149 | 208 | 354 |
| Average Finish | 11.22 | 14.44 | 14.44 | 15.93 | 17.56 | 8.78 | 10.33 | 13.81 | 9.11 |
| Points Position | 4 | 10 | 3 | 6 | 15 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
One of the major trends this chart displays is that Byron typically wins early and often each season and less often after the first quarter. Of his 14 career wins, the only ones that did not come in the first nine races of a season are his first win in 2020 and four wins in 2023. Byron’s top fives and top 10s tend to be spread out more evenly each year. Yet even in a season like 2021, where Byron had more top fives and top 10s later in the year, his results still earned him a better average finish during the first quarter of the season than the rest of the year.
Fans may also notice how much of an outlier the 2023 season was for Byron. It is the best year of his career by most metrics, including wins, top fives, laps led and average finish. He also scored 21 top 10s in 2023, a mark he matched last season. However, what sets 2023 apart is how many good runs Byron had later in the season. The majority of his wins, top fives, top 10s and laps led all came later in the year, and it is the only season of the Byron/Fugle pairing where that happened for all four categories. Notice how Byron earned top fives and top 10s at a superior rate later in the season than he did in the first quarter. Compare that to 2022, when Byron scored no more wins and only one additional top five outside the season’s first nine races.
If Byron is going to make a serious run at the championship, he will need to break out of his pattern and have a similar season to 2023. On paper, he is already ahead of where he was two years ago in several metrics. Byron’s average finish (9.11) is way better than what he had at this time in 2023 (17.56). The No. 24 team’s points position (first versus 15th) is better, too. It must be noted that, in 2023, Byron and his team received a 60-point penalty during the first quarter of the season for an illegal modification to the car’s greenhouse. Yet even with that penalty, Byron earned the most points in 2023 and, hypothetically, would have been the champion without any playoffs or points resets. That may provide the clearest picture of how strong Byron was throughout the season.
The crazy thing is that within the context of Byron’s pursuit of the championship, his fast start to 2025 does not really matter. Continuing his current level of success is much more important. Certainly, any team would prefer to begin the season well and be leading the points early. Additionally, no driver is going to turn down a Daytona 500 victory, even with the shortcomings of the Next Gen car on drafting tracks. A good start to the season allows teams valuable time to prepare for the playoffs, but Byron and the No. 24 crew have been in this position before in essentially every year for the last four seasons. They have come up short of the title every time. Good starts, by themselves, have not been enough.
Byron needs to repeat some of the accomplishments he pulled off in 2023. He needs to win a race in the late summer and gain momentum before the postseason. He must win races in the playoffs, something he has only done once, and continue to build his points. Then, if Byron is still in the hunt, he needs to go to Phoenix Raceway and win the championship event, something that the No. 24 team has never done. Those will be the races that truly determine whether Byron’s 2025 season is successful. For now, it is just a good start, and we have all seen that before.
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.