William Byron won the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 on Sunday, putting him in a position to make the Cup Series playoffs later this year. Currently, Byron is in fourth place in the Cup Series standings and just 21 points behind the leader Chase Elliot who won the Cup Series Championship in 2020. PopCulture.com recently caught up with Byron who revealed how he can win the first Cup Series title of his career.
“Well, it’s going to take a lot of work throughout the year,” Byron exclusively told PopCulture. “I feel like we’re still hard to tell who’s the favorite in that aspect. But we’re up there in the points standings and even with a couple bad races to start the year, I feel like we’re back on track and we’re performing well. So we just have to keep that performance up throughout the year and then peak at the right time when it comes to the end of the year. So got a lot of work to do, but I feel we definitely have a team capable of this year of winning the championship. We just have to work throughout the year to get to that point.”
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Along with winning on Sunday, Byron finished in the top five in another race and has led 148 laps in the five races he has competed in. NASCAR projects him to finish second in the Cup Series standings, which would be the best finish in his career. Last year, Byron qualified for the playoffs and finished 10th in the final standings.
The focus for Byron now is the next race, which is the Texas Grand Prix and the Circuit of Americas in Austin, Texas. The NASCAR drivers will be competing on a road course that presents new challenges. “It is a lot different,” Byron said. “It’s tough because we don’t go to road courses a lot, so you have to get your mindset back into what it’s going to take to be successful. But I think so far so good with this car and I feel like the road course will be no different. It’s going to be a good new challenge for the race car and a good challenge for the drivers to learn as we go.”
