Many of the photos of William Byron from his first win of the NASCAR Cup Series season showed him beaming in Victory Lane at Daytona International Speedway, holding two fingers aloft. He could have just as easily signaled No. 1 that February day, marking his place atop the scoring pylon or signifying his first scratch of this year’s win column. Instead, the gesture commemorated a rare feat as a winner of two consecutive Daytona 500 crowns.
The accomplishment positioned Byron for a sizable streak atop the Cup Series standings, which he led for 17 out of 18 races through the heart of the season’s first half. But lately, that veneer of peerless performance from the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports group had shown signs of giving way. The start of summer was especially cruel, and questions laced with doubt started to enter in about when — or even if — win No. 2 might arrive.
“Haven’t gotten many good finishes, and you get constantly — we kind of joked about it today — you constantly have these questions of what’s going wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong,” said No. 24 crew chief Rudy Fugle. “This year, I don’t know that there’s a ton wrong other than circumstance, and sometimes that’s the way these races play in the summer is that way.”
It took Byron nearly five and a half months to put two and two together in his 2025 campaign, and the 27-year-old driver savored the occasion of Sunday’s fuel-squeezing victory at Iowa Speedway with measures of elation and relief. The 22-race drought that had threatened to become a curious burden for the No. 24 team had finally ended, and Byron was eager to turn that reversal into forward progress with the Cup Series Playoffs approaching.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Iowa
“I really feel like we needed to win a race. I feel like we deserved to win a race based on how we’ve run all year. It just wasn’t happening,” said Byron, who won for the 15th time in his Cup Series career. “I felt like we were trying to — we had to learn how to do basically everything right, and things were still not really working out in our favor. This was just a big relief to have one go our way, and we’ve just been running so well this year, I feel like this is going to be a big momentum boost for our team just to be able to check that one off the list and keep carrying the speed that we’ve had.”
The team’s strength hasn’t been a major question mark, even as the Victory Lane absences began to accumulate. Byron had finished second or third on four other occasions this season, and his race-best 141 laps led in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 vaulted him back atop that category in the Cup Series this year.
His earlier brushes with a second 2025 victory came in sometimes heartbreaking fashion as the regular season entered its back half. Byron blistered the Coca-Cola 600 field by leading 283 of the 400 laps, only to place as the runner-up behind a resurgent Ross Chastain. Two weeks later, Michigan also appeared to be within his grasp when his No. 24 Chevy sputtered with a dry gas tank just before the white-flag lap.
That Mitten State misfortune was the first of eight races that Byron endured without a top-five finish, a stretch that included his first three DNFs of the year. Just last weekend, Byron faded from third place to 16th at the end of the Brickyard 400 with an ill-timed fuel fizzle. Memories of those late-race heartaches crept up again Sunday for Fugle, who watched the 350-lap race reach a wide split of pit-stop strategies with a mad rush of yellow flags in the later going.
“Yeah, in two of the races, three to four tenths of a gallon of gas would have gotten us a win in the past couple months, and then just these weird — even today I felt like the hammer was dropping on us,” Fugle said. “We were going to run in the top five and then all these cautions come and I was like, it’s all going against us. Thankfully, that last caution, and thankfully we had a good enough car that we were able to save gas and get there.
“It’s a credit to everybody on the team, but yeah, it’s been tough because you’re just waiting for that next thing to drop, so that’s why we were all sitting up there like, when is something to go wrong today, and it just didn’t. Thankfully, that gives us more confidence, and it’ll give us a boost for sure.”
The bigger-picture benefits from Iowa may not be calculable just yet, but the short-term gain returns Byron to the top of the Cup Series standings. He has good company in those upper reaches with Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott (18 points back) and Kyle Larson (minus-45) rounding out a 1-2-3 team monopoly in the points.
MORE: Cup Series standings | Race Rewind: Extended highlights | Watch NASCAR video highlights
Byron said the competition at the top hasn’t been a prime discussion topic among his fellow team members, calling it a “strength on strength” scenario that provides motivation to push forward. Even if it’s not a top talking point, the Regular Season Championship and the bounty of 15 playoff points that go with it remain an advantage worth chasing — even when those brief rough patches arise.
“When you get in these times, you just can’t question yourself,” said Jeff Andrews, Hendrick Motorsports president and general manager. “You’ve got to know that you’re putting the very best race cars on the race track you can, and I firmly believe that. The men and women of Hendrick Motorsports do an incredible job and build amazing race cars. We get to come to the race track and execute that great product. It’s been not that far off. It’s incredibly close right now. … It just doesn’t take much to go from top 2 or 3 and a little hiccup here or there and all of a sudden you’re outside the top 10, and once you get back there these days with this car, it’s tough. It’s a struggle to claw your way back up there.
“I love our race teams. I love where our mindset is right now. We’re rolling through the late part of the summer here, which typically hasn’t been our strongest time of year, and I just love what we’ve got going on right now, and we’re focused on that 1, 2, 3 in that Regular Season Championship and getting all those bonus points that are available. That’s another big one for us.”
The outcome was also huge for the collection of drivers competing for the three remaining playoff spots available with three regular-season races remaining, since Byron’s triumph prevented another new winner from narrowing the postseason window. The bad news on the other end is that an invigorated Byron is a dangerous Byron; one who has the realistic potential to reach the Championship 4 round of the playoffs for a third consecutive year.
His veteran crew chief put two and two together in pretty short order.
“I think he’s the best driver all around in the field right now,” Fugle said. “Of course, he’s mine, and I should say that, but I really think he’s maturing and getting the experience to show that off. He’s very well diversified, and then he’s a fighter. He’s got a heart of a lion and fights through everything. There’s no quit. Those are things that he’s gotten better at as well over the years is just rolling with the punches and what happens next, and next thing you know, you’re leading and you’ve got a chance to win.”