NASCAR

Can William Byron Make It Two Wins In A Row To Start The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Season?

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By
Jared Turner
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Jared Turner Sports Editor

Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.

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Published22 Feb 2025

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William Byron Daytona 500 burnout

William Byron started the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season in the greatest way possible: winning the Daytona 500. But what are the Hendrick Motorsports driver’s odds of backing up that victory with a trip to Victory Lane in Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400?

Historically-speaking, not very good. Drivers rarely make it a clean sweep of the NASCAR Cup Series season’s first two races. That’s the bad news for Byron.

The good news? Byron is quite the pro at Atlanta Motor Speedway — the track that NASCAR’s premier division visits this weekend.

Starting The NASCAR Cup Series Season 2-For-2 Has Proven Quite The Chore

It’s no wonder that Daytona 500 winners rarely open the NASCAR Cup Series season with consecutive victories. After all, for several decades, every winner of The Great American Race has spent the next few days on a media blitz that’s as exhausting as it is exhilarating.

William Byron has been no exception. For example, just a day after winning the Daytona 500 for the second year in a row, he made an appearance on WWE’s “Monday Night Raw.”

But although it’s been a whirlwind week for Byron, he is hopeful about his chances at Atlanta.

“Yeah, it’s a short week for our group, for a good reason, but I still think we’re ready for Atlanta,” Byron said, referring to his No. 24 team.

Byron is probably unaware that the last driver to start a NASCAR Cup Series season with back-to-back wins was Matt Kenseth in 2009. And the last driver before Kenseth? Jeff Gordon — now the vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports and Byron’s boss, of sorts — in 1997.

William Byron Could Buck The Trend Of Daytona 500 Winners Falling Short In Week Two

Though statistically and historically unlikely, William Byron probably has a better chance of capturing the NASCAR Cup Series season’s second race than most Daytona 500 winners in recent memory.

That’s because Byron is quite the beast at Atlanta Motor Speedway, triumphing twice in the last six races the high-speed, high-banked 1.54-mile quad-oval in Hampton, Georgia has hosted. It’s certainly no coincidence that Byron has scored both of his victories here since AMS officials added more banking to the track and narrowed its racing groove ahead of the 2022 season.

Since that change, Atlanta has raced more like a superspeedway and produced several thrilling finishes — including one a year ago that yielded one of the narrowest margins of victory in NASCAR history.

Byron, for his part, loves the new Atlanta.

“I think you’re going to see similar racing to what we saw this past weekend — and probably another crazy finish,” said Byron, who skated past a major last-lap crash in the Daytona 500 to go from ninth to first after the white flag.

It’s no wonder Byron is so high on AMS when you consider his recent performances at the track, where he prevailed first in 2022 and again in 2023. Not only does the Charlotte, North Carolina native have the two wins at the facility since the reconfiguration, but he has led the second-most laps (173). Over the same period of time, Byron is tied for the fourth-most top-10s (three) at AMS and boasts the fourth-best average running position (11.86).

“I really think Atlanta has become one of the best tracks we have,” he said.