William Byron will leave Atlanta Motor Speedway with another top 10 finish in his No. 9 Liberty University Chevrolet. Byron, a 19-year old driver from North Carolina, started in just his second NASCAR XFINITY Series race since joining JR Motorsports this last offseason.
Byron sat third in round one of XFINITY Series qualifying early Saturday morning. In round two, the No. 9 Chevrolet led the session to advance into the final round of 12 drivers. After the final round of 12 drivers, Byron sat second on the leaderboard behind pole sitter Kyle Busch. This placed him second on the starting grid in the Rinnai 250.
While the field circled for pace laps, Byron and the team found that they had a radio issue that impacted his crew from hearing him from inside the car. Since he could hear his crew chatter, they had to devise a strategy to communicate alternatively. The team asked Byron to perform certain moves throughout the event to signal yes or no.
Byron stayed inside the top 10 all throughout stage one. By being seventh on the leaderboard at the conclusion, Byron earned three additional driver points. After stage two, the North Carolina native sat one spot higher in sixth and gained four additional driver points to his weekend total of 39 – earning the most points of any driver in the race.
After making a few adjustments in the remainder of the Rinnai 250, Byron stayed inside the top 10 to earn a seventh-place finish in his No. 9 Chevrolet.
“We had a really good Liberty University Chevrolet today,” said Byron after the race. “We had a radio communication issue, which didn’t allow the team to hear what I was saying. Between Dave (Elenz) and Earl (Spotter), they would give me direction on how to tell them what the car felt like. It wasn’t ideal, but our team made it work. A second top-10 finish to start off the season is a pretty good feeling. We will go back to work and get ready for Vegas next week.”
After starting 17th at Daytona International Speedway last weekend, Byron led one lap and finished ninth in his XFINITY Series debut. With two races down in the books, he’ll head into Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend sitting second in driver points.
The young racer has some experience already at Las Vegas. Last season in the Camping World Truck Series under the Kyle Busch Motorsports banner, Byron captured a fifth-place finish at the 1.5-mile track after a 10th-place start.
About Me: Brett has been following the sport of NASCAR since the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Since Brett was 13, he has had a passion of chasing a job in sports that not many get the opportunity of doing. He has been in the NASCAR media since the middle of the 2010 season. Since then, he has been a part of many racing podcast shows to improve his talents. He has written for racingonfuel.com and theracingwheel.com. Currently, Brett writes for motorsportsnat.com and TracksideChatter.com. You can find him on twitter @NASCAR_Brett.
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