William Byron The Chase is On

This weekend marks the kickoff of the inaugural Chase for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Championship at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NHMS) in Loudon. Rookie William Byron leads the point standings as the top seed with five wins during the regular season, a record for a rookie in the Truck Series. Byron knows his way to Victory Lane at NHMS as well after winning a NASCAR K&N Pro Series East race there last year, and hopes to end up there again on Saturday.
 
Byron is confident going into this weekend based on his past experience at the 1.058-mile oval. Last year he started from the pole and led 68 of 70 laps en route to a win in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East. Last month he spent two days testing his No. 9 Liberty University Tundra at NHMS, logging nearly 400 laps along with his Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) teammates Christopher Bell and Cody Coughlin. Although he was already familiar with the track from racing there last year, learning to hit your marks in a truck is a new challenge.
 
The team’s goal for the first round of the Chase is to treat each race like any other. Go for the win if you have a truck capable of winning, but if not, be smart and get the best finish you can to gain as many points as possible. Avoiding mistakes both on the track, and on pit road is one of the biggest challenges of the Chase in any series. Luckily Byron has a mentor who is very familiar with that process, his owner Kyle Busch, who happened to win the 2015 Sprint Cup Series Championship with the same Chase format. His crew chief, Rudy Fugle, also knows a few things about winning championships since he claimed the owner’s and driver’s championship with Erik Jones last year. He also part of the owner’s championship teams at KBM in 2013 and 2014.
 
Although nobody knows who will win the inaugural Truck Series Chase, there are a few sure bets. The final seven races will be exciting, intense, competitive and unpredictable.

KBM PR