RICHMOND, Va. — William Byron seemed poised to be a part of the Hendrick Motorsports sweep atop the leaderboard Sunday at Richmond Raceway. He led a race-best 117 laps, pocketed a stage win along the way and was in contention for his third NASCAR Cup Series win of the season until nearly the end.
RELATED: Richmond race results | At-track photos
A restart jam-up was the undoing of the 25-year-old driver, whose No. 24 Chevrolet took the brunt of contact from Christopher Bell’s No. 20 Toyota in a crash with 20 laps remaining. It sent Byron to a 24th-place result in the Toyota Owners 400 as the final driver on the lead lap.
“We definitely were a top-three car, which is good for this place,” Byron said. “You just want to kind of be in contention to have a shot. So yeah, good to have another great car. Sucks to finish in the 20s and hit the wall that hard. So that’s never fun, but it is what it is.”
Bell came home fourth, just behind third-finishing Ross Chastain — the other driver who was part of their three-abreast battle on the next-to-last restart. Chastain’s No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet took the green flag from the fourth row and dove inside of Bell as the field surged toward Turn 1. Bell’s car slid up into Byron’s, which backed into the outside retaining barrier.
Bell initially leveled blame for the lack of running room at Chastain, calling his move “banzai” and referencing his aggressive nature by saying, “Ross did what Ross does.” But Bell backtracked on social media after the race, apologizing to Byron and adding that replays confirmed he had more space in the first turn.
https://twitter.com/cbellracing/status/1642682978730999808
It was a measure of validation for Chastain, who did not trigger the Bell-Byron contact with any excessive crowding from the low groove.
“I didn’t touch anybody, and I got inside of the 20 entering Turn 1,” Chastain said. “That’s all I saw.”
Byron held off on fully assigning responsibility for the crash in his remarks immediately after the race.
“I don’t know all the details,” Byron said. “I haven’t looked at it in-depth to understand it, but I just know they were all funneling from the bottom, and it looked like the 20 just had the brakes locked up. So is what it is.”