William Byron takes late lead, wins second straight

By Noah Nelson

William Byron dominated stage one, leading 62 laps, but didn’t lead again until he took the lead on an overtime restart, bringing home his second consecutive victory. Byron got a bump from Tyler Reddick while three-wide off of turn two, cleared his competitors Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson, and set sail for the checkered flag, as Blaney, Reddick, and Larson trailed him to the finish line.

“You’ve got to have a chance there on the front row to really have clean air on your nose and make the right moves. We were able to get on the front row there and stay on the outside of Kyle (Larson) the second time and have a good-enough restart. Those green-white-checkers, you can either wreck or win. We’ve been on the good side of them for a couple of weeks. This team has been working really hard. We didn’t want to stop last week, and we just wanted to keep it going. We have more work to do, but hopefully this week is a little bit calmer and we can relax a little bit. … I feel like now it’s strength on strength. It feels different. It feels like we’re more consistently toward the front and we’re leading laps. We just want to focus on our processes during the week. I think our processes this week were kind of frustrating because we didn’t really get to do the things we wanted to do. Everyone was a little tired. We did that Charlotte test. There was a lot going on on the outside. It was a little frustrating going into today, but it’s cool to see that we can overcome those things and still get a win,” said Byron.

Even with the victory, a potential penalty for confiscated hood louvers looms large over the Hendrick Motorsports camp, who placed all four cars in the top-ten, including Josh Berry, who brought home his best career cup finish in his second race filling in for the injured Chase Elliott.

Kevin Harvick, in his penultimate race at the track he’s had the most success at, came home fifth after losing the lead late. He looked to be heading to victory lane just moments before, having a five-second lead over Kyle Larson disappear after a caution for Harrison Burton on lap 309.

The race then came down to a strategy decision, with some cars (including Byron, Larson, and Blaney) opting for two tires, while others (like Reddick and Harvick) took four, hoping they could blast their way through the pack, as fresh tires were crucial for success all day. In the end, the drivers that took four tires ran out of time.

“That one is not fun to swallow. We had a great car and didn’t need that caution at the end. We had a strong car and a chance to win. Just hate missing an opportunity when you have a car that strong,” said Harvick.

“I just needed to execute on that restart. Just didn’t get the launch I needed to and wasn’t on William’s (Bryon) back bumper to take advantage of it in Turn 1. It’s very frustrating naturally – I think last year was kind of the same thing. I didn’t have the best of restarts and finished third. This car was solidly like a third-to-fifth place car all day long, so to bring it home third is great, but, obviously when you are on four (tires) and you get position there at the end with that restart, you want to capitalize, so frustrating for sure,” said Reddick.

The importance of this race was not lost on fourth-place Kyle Larson’s mind, with the Spring Phoenix race being a measuring stick as to who could be contenders for the win, and ultimately the championship, with the series returning here for the finale in November.

“Great fight by the team, great car, way better than we were here last year. Yeah, I mean, it’s a long season, but hopefully we’re in the Final Four when we come back here in November and can have a run similar to that with speed and try to execute a little bit better at the end,” he said.

Alex Bowman takes the points lead after Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin’s entanglement on the last restart took both cars to the back of the lead lap. The series heads to Atlanta next week, where William Byron looks to continue his hot streak and defend his victory from a year ago.

Results from the United Rentals Work United 500 at Phoenix: