Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports, who heads back to Darlington Raceway this weekend one year after leading 243 laps before eventually finishing second. This interview is also available on the 12 Questions Podcast.
1. Do you typically arrive for things early, late or on time, and why?
It definitely depends on what I’m doing. If it’s competition-related, I’m usually a couple minutes early. And then if it’s marketing-related, I’m usually five minutes late. If it’s home stuff, I’m pretty punctual. I like to be within the minute.
Our schedule is pretty much minute by minute, everything we do, so it kind of becomes your lifestyle.
2. What is the pettiest thing that annoys you during a race weekend?
Socializing too much. I’m a pretty social person throughout the week, but when it comes to race weekends, I have an amount of time that I can be social for. So I’m pretty introverted when it comes to race weekends.
It’s too chaotic, if the energy is off, I just stick (to chilling out). Honestly, on the race weekend, everything kind of centers around how it goes on track, and then I just model it after that. So I don’t make too many set plans for that reason.
3. What is something you’ve learned to stop explaining to people?
The worst one is when you go golfing with people or go out with people, and they start asking all the “NASCAR 101” questions. You know, “If you have to go to the restroom, how does that work in the race?” “What’s it like to go fast? What does that feel like?”
They just start rattling them off. If they start rattling off like five or six, I’m like, “Whoa, let’s just take a step back here.” I just like to chill. I’m a pretty chill person, so I just like to have good conversation. But when you start getting quizzed, it gets a little much.
4. If you could go back to the early days before you reached NASCAR, what is one different decision you wish you had made in your career?
I wish I had just been more patient with myself in terms of the judgment I put on myself to perform. When I was really young, I put so much pressure on myself once I got into the NASCAR ranks.
That wasn’t really there the first year when I was racing. I was just having fun. I was enjoying it. I never thought I was going to be a NASCAR driver. When I started to get with teams and big organizations, I put a lot of judgment and pressure on myself each time on the racetrack, and I just think that creates a lot of stress and anxiety.
5. What is it like to be in a debrief after a bad race?
Depends. Sometimes it’s really productive. I’d use (Phoenix) as an example. We didn’t have a lot of speed, and we were kind of struggling for some answers, but we had a good finish, so that helped.
Honestly, that Sunday night, I was so ready to get back to the shop and just be like, “Hey, let’s talk about it. Let’s go dive into it.” So it can go one of two ways. If you have a few bad weeks in a row, it gets very tough to still have those dialogues. But one bad week and a bad finish or whatever, sometimes you’re excited to talk about it.
6. I’m asking two wild-card questions: One about the past and one related to the present. Brad Keselowski said he wishes there were more of a process before young drivers get to Cup because of the pressure. Now that you have some distance from starting so young, do you think that’s true?
Yeah, I do think there could be some patience on that side. I feel like it’s very marketing-driven and very economics-driven, so I probably have a different take on this.
I feel like watching Kimi Antonelli in F1, he is being put into a really good position, good team, surrounding himself with a lot of good people. That is not always the case when you get into Cup racing. It’s a little bit more like the draft in the NFL. You get kind of placed with a team or a driver that was already not succeeding, not working out, and you’re just tasked with, “Hey, you’re the new guy, you’re fast, so figure it out,” and you have no people skills.
For me, it’s more about the people skills and relationship-building off the track and knowing what you want, having that confidence. That’s why you see a big, steep learning curve when it comes to NASCAR racing, because you don’t (always) get put with the best people around you right away. It’s just not going to happen. Myself, Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin — they’re going to have the best people around them. So it takes time to build that.
“I wish I had just been more patient with myself,” William Byron says of his younger days. “When I was really young, I put so much pressure on myself (to perform).” (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
7. The other wild-card question is you’re coming up on 300 Cup starts with 16 wins, two Daytona 500s, three Championship 4 appearances. Do you have big-picture career goals for what else you want to accomplish, or are you more week to week?
In some ways, when you list all those things — and the word 300 with 16 — I feel like there’s a lot of room to improve. So for me, there’s still tons of room to grow as a driver, and there are probably a lot of things I haven’t accomplished yet.
I don’t really look at the accomplishments, but I look at the fact that there’s still a lot of growth that can happen with me. I’m 28 years old, and hopefully I’m just kind of reaching the peak of my career. So I look at everything as an upward trajectory, and how can I make the most out of my career? And maybe I haven’t yet.
I feel like there were a lot of lessons to learn in my first seven or eight years. I think I have the ability, and now it’s kind of put with the mental side. So I hope there’s a long runway there for crown jewels and just race wins. I think race wins — when you look at your career — you always remember how many races you won. And championships would be that way, too.
I’m excited for this new format. I had a note in my phone that said “the next decade is going to kind of determine how I’m going to be viewed and how I’m going to view my career.” So with this format and the way it is, I think that’s how it’s going to be.
8. If you could have any driver’s helmet in the history of motorsports, whose would it be?
I’m not a big memorabilia collector. I always thought Jimmie (Johnson’s) helmets were cool, some of the Kobalt days with the silver and black.
I’m not really a huge collector. I haven’t traded any. I barely collect my own. Usually about two years later I’m like, “Hey, where’d that helmet go?” I have probably five or six in my house, but I’m just not a huge collector.
What happens to the other ones?
Sometimes they go in storage, and sometimes they get rotated through, or we keep them for the next year. I’m not very sentimental with the helmets, but maybe I should be. Maybe that’ll be something later in my career.
9. When things aren’t going well, do you prefer people leave you alone or check in on you?
I have a window of time where I just want to be left alone after the event. Then I start to kind of open back up Monday, Tuesday.
What I don’t like, though, is when people come to me Wednesday and start recapping the weekend, and I’m past it. I do have a period where I like to be left alone. Then I like to process, and then I’m over it. Then I’m on to the next thing.
I hate when people on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday talk about the previous weekend, because to me it’s already over.
10. What is something about yourself that would surprise people who think they “know” you?
I think there’s probably a lot of things, because I’m pretty easygoing, so I’m not really going to tell you what I’m thinking all the time. That’s why I keep a pretty small circle, because a lot of people don’t actually know me.
That’s kind of the thing that I’ve always struggled with. So that’s the goal for me, just kind of keep a tight circle.
11. What is something you laugh about now that was absolutely not funny at the time?
You look back at a lot of things that you see on YouTube, and you’ll even look at an interview of yourself where you took yourself so seriously, and then you look back at it and see the differences.
Perspective is really powerful. A couple years later, you see a lot different view of yourself.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Noah Gragson and he wanted to know: If you had one race, one car, one track, what’s your dream combination?
I always wanted to drive those 2014 Cup cars because I felt like they had a ton of power and good downforce. So I’d say those, and I’d say Darlington, and like a night race in May.
It’s going to be crazy (this week). It’s going to be really low grip, so I’m intrigued to see how that works out.
The next interview is with Jesse Love. Do you have a question I can ask him?
What’s his favorite restaurant in town? Wherever he lives. I’m always curious. I’m a foodie.