Ask Dana Byron if her family has a special connection to Martinsville Speedway, and she smiles while offering a gentle clarification.
“Actually, we have several,” she says, having just watched her son, 24-year-old William Byron, add another layer to the list with a convincing triumph on a chilly Saturday night. The confetti had stopped swirling in Martinsville’s Victory Lane, her son’s No. 24 Chevrolet had since been pushed away to the post-race inspection line, but the family remained close to the grandfather clock trophy that quietly ticked and marked the moments they were all savoring.
What a passage of time it had been.
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Dana Byron recalled a long-ago connection, when her husband, Bill, took their son to his first Cup Series race at Martinsville when he was barely in grade school. The family lived in Charlotte, not terribly far from the speedway there, but opted to drive north for that first fan experience, allowing the youngster to pull for Jimmie Johnson – his favorite – in person.
The more recent bond to Martinsville came with a significant degree of trauma. It was a year ago at the same track where the elder Byrons were watching from the skybox suites as William raced. During the event, Dana said she felt ill and speculated that the symptoms indicated she was having a stroke. She was whisked to a local hospital in Martinsville, and the diagnosis came later: MALT lymphoma, a rare but ultimately treatable tumor on the side of her brain.
While his relatives scrambled, the younger Byron drove on to respectable fourth-place finish after starting third. When he returned to his motorcoach, he found a text with uncharacteristic urgency from his father: “Call me.”
“It all seemed OK, but they were like, yeah, there’s this mass in her brain, we’re not sure what it is,” William Byron said. “My heart just stopped. I was just like, man, I couldn’t deal with the emotion of that. It was hard to process. I’d say the next few days after that I didn’t think about racing at all. It was all about what was going on.”
A major surgery followed, but so did complications, a handful of follow-up operations to address them, plus daily radiation treatment – all in the span of what William called “a crazy 90 to 100 days.” All the while, the younger Byron still had a job to do, and he performed it with aplomb. He revealed his mother’s diagnosis on social media May 4, five days before Mother’s Day. On the track, he followed the family hardship at Martinsville by eight top-10 finishes in a 10-race stretch.
“William has got a tight-knit family with his sister and his mom and his dad. Yeah, of course it affects him,” said Rudy Fugle, Byron’s longtime crew chief. “He’s a professional, and he doesn’t really wear a bunch of his emotions on his sleeve, but you know it affects you. We’ve all gone through different things in our lives, and as much as we want to block it out, it affects us and what we do.
“He did an awesome job of trying to … getting through all that and still being successful and racing, but it’s amazing. Just so happy that a year anniversary for that to get a win. It’s pretty awesome.”
The younger Byron wasn’t the only winner from the weekend. Dana Byron said her recent scans were negative and that doctors were optimistic about her long-term prognosis. “So this is a year, a year and I’m cancer-free,” she said, “so it has a lot of special meanings.”
The Byrons added more connections as the weekend progressed. William opened the Martinsville tripleheader with a Camping World Truck Series victory Thursday evening. His parents revisited the Martinsville hospital earlier on the race-day Saturday, bringing treats and No. 24 gear as a show of thanks to their first-response caregivers.
The Byrons will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary Monday, and their choice for a getaway destination was a frightfully cold night race at Martinsville. William delivered again later Saturday to make that trip even more worthwhile, converting after a dominant second-half drive to become the Cup Series’ first two-time winner this year.
“It was awesome. We’re so proud of him,” Dana Byron said. “He’s just been racing so much and winning, and this is, I think, his breakout year. He’s just in the zone. I can tell he’s so focused right now.”
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After Victory Lane ceremonies, the proud parents arrived to the Martinsville media center before their son did, not long after the clock ticked over from Saturday to Sunday. Jeff Gordon, Hendrick Motorsports’ vice chairman and a nine-time Martinsville winner, acknowledged both their presence in the back rows and their fight through adversity as his portion of the post-race press conference drew to a close. The night’s last round of applause went to Dana Byron.
The historic track kicked off its 75th anniversary celebration this year by handing out three grandfather clock trophies for each NASCAR national-series race winner of the weekend. Byron wound up with two of the three.
The near-obligatory question arose, asking Byron where he’d find room for the pair of seven-foot-tall timepieces. At this, Bill Byron perked up, then shook a pair of triumphant fist-pumps as his son indicated that he’d planned to keep one and send the other one home with his folks.
Yet another Martinsville connection for a family with plenty to celebrate.
“As we got on the other side of that, there was a lot of bright side. Great to have her here and have them here and just see how things have progressed in a year,” Byron said. ” It’s been amazing. Definitely makes you count your blessings and be thankful for everything, and nothing more special than tonight to kind of cap it all off a year later on the same weekend. Pretty special, and yeah, pretty cool.”