An Awful Start to The Chase Compounds Miserable 2026 for William Byron

For the majority of the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway this past Sunday afternoon, William Byron was having a decent, if not spectacular, day. Byron had started the day 85 points back in 13th place in the Chase standings but spent most of the race running in the top 10 and was in ninth place on lap 315 when he spun and was unable to get his engine back running.

The sour motor relegated the driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to a 37th-place finish. It was Byron’s fourth DNF of the season, and the paltry six-point haul saw him slip to 16th and last in the Chase standings, a whopping 114 points behind leader Denny Hamlin who had problems of his own but still retained his points lead.

Speaking to reporters in the garage as the race wound down, Byron was unable to diagnose what the issue.

“Still trying to figure it out,” Byron said. “But yeah, super odd, I don’t know. I had some sort of issue and then eventually something broke. Whatever, I’m not sure.”

On a more positive note, Byron was relatively encouraged by his performance if not his result: “I thought we did a good job to have good speed. But just got to continue working. So, we’ll do that.”

So, what has gone wrong for Willy B in 2026, who was a perennial title contender that made three consecutive Championship 4 appearances (2023-2025)? Well, in a word, performance. As an organization, Hendrick Motorsports has not had an easy time in 2026 with the introduction of the new Chevrolet body.

Last year, by comparison, the team had eight total wins and a second NASCAR Cup Series championship for Kyle Larson, while in 2024, the team garnered an impressive 11 wins. This year, albeit with some races to go, they have just two, both by Chase Elliott in the seventh (Martinsville Speedway) and 11th (Texas Motor Speedway) races of the season. Put another way, it’s been over four months and 16 races since the last trip to Victory Lane for any HMS wheelman.

But it’s not just the lack of wins that has troubled Byron.

His record of four top fives, 11 top 10s, 176 laps led and a 16.89 average finish see him tracking towards his worst full season record since 2019, his second year in the Cup Series. Added to this, his average starting position of 15.1 is the worst he’s had since his rookie season (17.7 in 2019).

As a mitigating factor, he has also had some bad luck. His three other DNFs at Talladega Superspeedway, Watkins Glen International and Nashville Superspeedway were all crashes not of his own making.

But at the same time, he hasn’t converted when he has had the necessary speed. At Chicagoland Speedway, Byron led a race-best 94 laps and swept both stages, but he faded to fourth place after Chase Briscoe undercut him on a late pit stop. And in some ways, that felt like a microcosm of the season: flashes of the old Byron with none of the payoff.

One of the more surprising aspects of Byron’s struggles is just how precipitous the relative drop-off in form has been. Let’s not forget, heading into the 2026 season, as the two-time defending Daytona 500 winner, Byron had established himself as one of the most consistent championship threats in the garage and was the only driver to make three straight Championship 4 appearances. All of which suggested that it was not so much a question of if Byron could contend for a title, but when he would finally win the most coveted prize in the sport.

The good news for Byron is that there were at least some encouraging signs at Darlington before his race unraveled. The Lady in Black is a driver’s race track, no question, and the speed on the day was a sign that the No. 24 team hasn’t completely forgotten how to build fast race cars and contend near the front of the field. The trouble is that many of his fellow Chase contenders also showed speed at Darlington, while Byron has lacked anything resembling consistency in 2026. And with just one top-10 run in four prior starts at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, an eighth in 2023, the expectations and outlook are at best mixed for Byron heading into the second of the 10 Chase races.

And while there are still nine full races to run and plenty of points to race for, Byron finds himself in a huge hole and without the benefit of the three-race points reset to save him. Now, we’ve seen a driver get hot before in the Chase after a poor regular season (just look at Tony Stewart’s remarkable run to the 2011 title), but the reality is that Byron is unlikely to dig himself out of the hole he is in, barring a particularly unexpected turn of events these next nine weeks.

So is it over for Willy B already? No, not quite, but he needs to string together a series of nine great races, all while picking up a ton of stage points and likely multiple wins. Possible? Yes. Likely? No.