William Byron’s pit strategy falls short: ‘Nothing I could do about them’

RICHMOND, Va. -- William Byron came up five laps short of earning his second victory of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season in Sunday's Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway. Byron and the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team elected to utilize an alternative pit strategy, staying out on older tires. Others elected to pit for fresh tires with fewer than 50 laps remaining. Byron pitted from the lead on Lap 311 of the 400-lap race, while Martin Truex Jr. came down pit road on Lap 324. The difference in pit stops allowed Byron to retain the top spot. But what threw a wrench in the plans occurred on Lap 354 when Denny Hamlin brought his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota down pit road for the final time. The 43-lap fresher Goodyears compared to Byron's worn set allowed Hamlin to rocket through the field, making up more than a 17-second gap in the final stretch to the finish. Hamlin tracked down Byron with five circuits to go and passed him for the race win. Kevin Harvick, who hit pit road a lap before Hamlin, took the second spot, leaving Byron to a third-place result. Truex, passed by his teammate and Harvick, finished fourth. "I thought we did the best job we could, obviously it didn't quite work out," Byron said. "I thought there at the end they told me I was just racing the 19 (Truex) and I'm like, 'Okay, I got him,' but then the 4 (Harvick) and the 11 (Hamlin) were on a totally different planet. Just part of it. "There was nothing I could do about them (Hamlin and Harvick)," Byron added. RELATED: Official results | Hamlin surges to Richmond victory Byron kicked off the race on the outside front row alongside polesitter Ryan Blaney, finishing second in Stage 1. But trouble with a rear wheel during the first round of pit stops set the No. 24 team back in the middle portion of the race. "I thought it was helping at the beginning and at the end," Byron said. "In the middle, we were terrible. We just couldn't get in the corner at all. When you can't get in the corner, you can't put consistent laps together." Byron's car lacked the speed necessary to make his way back up through the field after the pit-road misuse, so pit strategy, a decision led by crew chief Rudy Fugle, ultimately served as Byron's best shot at victory. There was also a point with 20 laps remaining where Byron's pace was slowed due to cars with faster tires, which deferred his racing line to the top groove as opposed to staying on the bottom lane where they could use the yellow-painted line to maximize a little more grip out of their worn-out tires. "Those three or four laps in a row ultimately were the second and a half that we needed," crew chief Rudy Fugle said. There were four or five cars that passed within that five-lap window. We just got hung off the yellow line and it hurts." Admittedly, Fugle also thought the race victory was going to be determined by a duel between his driver and Truex, but the late-race speed of Hamlin and Harvick on new tires worked them through traffic better than anticipated. "We weren't going to have a car to march through the field, but obviously we had a car where every time we started up front, we could stay up front," Fugle said. "There's good things and bad things from that where we can learn from and get better. At the beginning of the day and after Stage 1, I would have told you, yeah, we had a car that could compete in the top five. Then after Stage 2, I would have told you I'd be happy with third, for sure. Disappointed in how it ended up because he did a great job all of Stage 3 giving us a shot to win." [pickup_prop id="22917"]