A Hendrick Motorsports driver who went from a Truck Series rookie record to Daytona 500 victories in 2024 and 2025.
William Byron is an American NASCAR driver who races full-time in the Cup Series for Hendrick Motorsports. He won the 2017 Xfinity Series title and the 2018 Cup Series Rookie of the Year award, and he has won the Daytona 500 in both 2024 and 2025.
William Byron is an American stock car driver who has raced full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series for Hendrick Motorsports since 2018. He won the 2017 Xfinity Series championship and the 2025 Cup regular season title. He has also won the Daytona 500 in both 2024 and 2025.
Who is William Byron?
William McComas Byron Jr. was born on 29 November 1997 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is an American professional stock car racer. He runs the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in the Cup Series and, on a part-time basis, the No. 88 car in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series for JR Motorsports.
Byron's interest in racing began at the age of six, after he saw a stock car race on television. He attended a race at Martinsville Speedway in 2006, and as a teenager he raced on the iRacing simulator, where he built up more than one hundred wins before he moved into real cars.
He holds championships in three series, including the 2017 Xfinity title and the 2025 Cup regular season crown.
How did Byron get into real racing?
In 2012 Byron began racing Legends cars at fifteen, which was relatively late for a modern driver. That year he won 33 races and took the Legend Car Young Lions Division title. In 2014 he joined the JR Motorsports late model program at Hickory Motor Speedway, where he finished second in points behind teammate Josh Berry.
That 2014 season brought one win and eleven top-five finishes in the No. 9 Liberty University Chevrolet, while he kept racing Legends cars alongside it. The results gave him the platform for a move into a professional development series.
What did the K&N Pro Series title involve?
Byron won the 2015 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship. He raced for HScott Motorsports with Justin Marks, with Liberty University as his sponsor, and he took four wins in the East series that season on the way to the title.
His first race in the series was at New Smyrna Speedway in February, where he finished seventh. He later won the Greenville-Pickens race, starting second and leading every one of its 152 laps. That summer he also took part in his first ARCA Racing Series event, at Lucas Oil Raceway, driving a Toyota Camry for Venturini Motorsports, and he finished second there after leading 120 laps.
His team also raced the K&N Pro Series West events at Sonoma and Phoenix, where he finished fifth and second. Those results added to a season that showed a steady rise through the ranks.
How did the Truck Series rookie season go in 2016?
Byron joined Kyle Busch Motorsports full-time for 2016, driving the No. 9 Toyota Tundra in the Camping World Truck Series. He finished the year fifth in the standings, with seven wins, eleven top-five finishes and sixteen top-ten finishes from 23 races, and he was named Rookie of the Year.
The season began with a last-lap crash at Daytona, where he finished thirteenth, and a 32nd-place finish at Atlanta after an engine failure. He recovered with a strong third at Martinsville, his first top three in the series, and his first Truck win came at Kansas in May.
Byron then won at Texas, Iowa and Kentucky, and the Kentucky win put him first in the points. A fifth victory at Pocono broke the rookie record for Truck Series wins, which had stood at four since Kurt Busch's 2000 season.
A playoff victory came at New Hampshire, in the first race of the Round of 8. An engine failure at Phoenix in the Round of 6 cost him a place in the Championship 4, and he finished the season with a win at Homestead. That year the team also took the owners' championship for the No. 9 car.
What did the Xfinity Series title look like in 2017?
In August 2016 Byron signed a multi-year contract with Hendrick Motorsports. In 2017 he ran full-time in the Xfinity Series for JR Motorsports, driving the No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro SS. He won the series championship at Homestead, holding off Elliott Sadler in the final laps.
His first career Xfinity win came at Iowa, after Christopher Bell crashed late in the race. He won again the following week in an overtime finish at Daytona, then took the Indianapolis Motor Speedway race and a fourth win at Phoenix. A second place at Michigan, behind Denny Hamlin, had come earlier in the year.
The Phoenix victory placed him among the four drivers eligible for the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He returned to the Xfinity Series in 2022 for JR Motorsports, finishing second at Texas, and in 2023 he ran one race at COTA and finished second behind A. J. Allmendinger.
Why did Byron move to the No. 24 in 2018?
In August 2017 Hendrick Motorsports said Byron would replace Kasey Kahne in the No. 5 car for 2018. Twenty days later the team announced he would drive the No. 24 instead, while Chase Elliott moved to the renamed No. 9. Byron took over the team that had run Kahne's car, with Darian Grubb as crew chief.
Grubb later moved into a technical role, and Chad Knaus became crew chief for Byron's No. 24 team in 2019. The 2018 Rookie of the Year award was secured before the second-last race of the year at ISM Raceway.
What were the 2019 and 2020 seasons like?
In 2019 Byron started on pole for the Daytona 500, with Hendrick cars on the front two rows, and he reached the playoffs for the first time. He finished sixth at the Charlotte Roval and advanced to the Round of 12, where he was eliminated after the Kansas race.
The 2020 season brought his first Cup win. He won Duel 2 to start fourth in the Daytona 500, but finished 40th in that race. In August he won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona in overtime, which took him into the playoffs. He was eliminated after the first round at Bristol, where an accident left him 38th.
Later that year Byron extended his Hendrick contract through 2022, which set up the seasons that followed.
How did 2021 go?
In 2021 Byron took the win at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the third race of the year, and led 101 of the last 112 laps. That win started an eleven-race top-ten streak, which he later ended with eleventh at the Circuit of the Americas. The year closed with a tenth-place points finish, his best to that point.
Qualifying was strong at Daytona, where he took second on the grid behind Alex Bowman, but the 500 itself ended in 26th place. His top-five finishes came at Martinsville, Talladega, Darlington and Dover, and he finished fourth at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600.
The playoffs were less kind, as Las Vegas and Talladega brought weak finishes. He was eliminated from the Round of 8 after the Charlotte Roval race.
What happened in 2022?
In 2022 Byron won at Atlanta and Martinsville, and he finished sixth in the points, a career best at that point. In May he signed a contract extension with Hendrick through 2025. He was eliminated after the Round of 8, following an eighth place at Martinsville.
Two incidents drew attention that year. A generator fire hit the hauler of the No. 24 days before the Indianapolis road race, but the car was not damaged. Byron put Denny Hamlin into the infield grass at the Texas playoff race, and he was fined US$50,000 and docked points. An appeals panel later rescinded the points penalty and raised the fine to US$100,000.
What did 2023 look like?
In 2023 Byron won six races, including a pair of straight wins at Las Vegas and Phoenix, and he finished third in the points. The Texas win in the opener of the Round of 12 was Hendrick Motorsports' 300th Cup victory.
Two penalties hit the No. 24 team that spring. At Phoenix the car was found with unapproved hood louvers, and the team lost one hundred driver and owner points plus ten playoff points. Crew chief Rudy Fugle sat out four races under suspension. An appeals panel later restored the points but kept the fine and the suspension.
A second penalty followed the Richmond race, when alterations to the car's greenhouse led to sixty points for owners and drivers, plus five playoff points. Interim crew chief Brian Campe received a two-race suspension. Darlington gave Byron his seventh career win, which was also the 100th overall win for the No. 24, and rain-shortened Atlanta brought his fourth of the season.
How did Byron win the 2024 Daytona 500?
Byron won the 2024 Daytona 500 as the first winner of that race for the No. 24 since Jeff Gordon in 2005. It was also Hendrick Motorsports' first Daytona 500 win since 2014. The victory came forty years to the day after the team's first race as a team, at the 1984 Daytona 500.
A month later he won again on the road course in Austin. A third win followed in early April at Martinsville, where Hendrick teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott also filled the top three on the team's fortieth anniversary.
He had no playoff wins but reached the Championship 4 after Christopher Bell was penalised for a manoeuvre NASCAR had banned after 2022. The entry into the title race was also marred by team-order controversy, with Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain accused of blocking other cars in Byron's favour. Both drivers and Bubba Wallace received penalties, and Byron finished third in the standings.
What happened in 2025?
Byron won his second straight Daytona 500 in 2025, placing him among only five drivers to have won the race in consecutive seasons. In May he extended his Hendrick contract through 2029. He added a second win of the season at Iowa and then won at Martinsville in the playoffs to make the Championship 4.
That season he also claimed the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Champion title, which put his career championships in three series.
What does the career summary show?
| Year | Series | Team | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | K&N Pro Series East | HScott Motorsports | Series champion, four wins |
| 2016 | Camping World Truck Series | Kyle Busch Motorsports | Rookie of the Year, fifth in points |
| 2017 | Xfinity Series | JR Motorsports | Series champion |
| 2018 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Rookie of the Year |
| 2020 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | First Cup win at Daytona |
| 2021 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Tenth in points |
| 2022 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Sixth in points |
| 2023 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Six wins, third in points |
| 2024 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Daytona 500 winner, third in points |
| 2025 | Cup Series | Hendrick Motorsports | Daytona 500 winner, Regular Season Champion |
What is Byron's legacy so far?
Byron moved through the K&N, Truck and Xfinity series before becoming a full-time Cup driver. He holds championships in three series, including the 2017 Xfinity title and the 2025 Cup regular season crown.
His record includes a Truck Series rookie record for wins, set in 2016 at Pocono, and back-to-back Daytona 500 wins in 2024 and 2025. He remains a Hendrick Motorsports driver, with a contract running through 2029.
