NEWTON, Iowa \u2014 Six days after crew chief Rudy Fugle told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that his Hendrick Motorsports team was \u201cstarving\u201d for a win, William Byron took the checkered flag Sunday at Iowa Speedway.<\/p>\n
Byron and the No. 24 team had only one victory in the last 50 Cup races before Sunday \u2014 this year\u2019s Daytona 500. Even with the lack of victories, Byron entered Iowa four points behind teammate Chase Elliott for the points lead.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
But Fugle knew that the No. 24 team needed a victory ahead of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we needed that fulfillment,\u201d Fugle told NBC Sports on Sunday night. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking for that. It\u2019s really hard to show the stats we have, to run up front, to lead the laps, to show up fast every week but then you don\u2019t always bring it home and then have the guys believe that they are doing the right thing because they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are doing a great job. Everybody is doing the right thing, but sooner or later there\u2019s going to be questions and doubts about what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when the guys, naturally, have a little bit of doubt, I have doubt. I wonder what\u2019s going to happen today. It\u2019s nice to get a reminder about why you\u2019re doing it and that you\u2019re doing the right things. (Sunday was) a good reminder that we can win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Byron\u2019s victory moved him Elliott in the standings with three races left in the regular season. But the victory also was only the second for Hendrick Motorsports in the past 11 races.<\/p>\n
Although Hendrick has not won as often lately, it has the top three drivers in the points. Byron leads Elliott by 18 points and Kyle Larson by 45 points heading into Sunday\u2019s race at Watkins Glen International (coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. ET on USA Network).<\/p>\n
So while Hendrick Motorsports continued to be atop the points, an organization built on winning races and championships, had not been as effective since late May.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s incredibly close right now,\u201d Jeff Andrews, president and general manager of Hendrick Motorsports, said of the competition this summer. “I think you saw the lap times (Sunday at Iowa), and the tire falloff was next to nothing, and at one time there was this whole group of cars within a tenth, tenth and a half (of a second) of the top 10.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just doesn’t take much to go from top two or three and a little hiccup here or there and all of a sudden you’re outside the top 10, and once you get back there these days with this car, it’s tough. It’s a struggle to claw your way back up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Byron had to do Sunday after being caught a lap down because of a caution during a pit cycle. Byron\u2019s advantage was that he was the first car a lap down and got the free pass.<\/p>\n
He made his last pit stop 144 laps from the finish and would not have made it to the end on fuel had there not been eight cautions for 53 laps the rest of the way. Twice this summer, Byron has run out of fuel at the end of a race, costing him a top-five finish at Michigan and Indianapolis.<\/p>\n
He had plenty of fuel even after crossing the finish line at Iowa. It made for quite a celebration for he and the team.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cI was as excited as I\u2019ve been in a long time,\u201d Fugle said of seeing Byron\u2019s car cross the finish line. \u201cWhen we got the white flag and we hadn\u2019t had a low fuel pressure signal, I felt fairly confident. And then once we got off of Turn 2 and got down the backstretch, I felt really confident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fuel mileage part was a weight lifted off of our shoulders. I could feel it listening to our engineers at home over the intercom, let alone, my engineer sitting next to me on the box. It was just a huge weight lifted to finally win one of these.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWTON, Iowa \u2014 Six days after crew chief Rudy Fugle told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that his Hendrick Motorsports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,4387,4384,1425,26424,634,32511,82,4382],"class_list":["post-46628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase-elliott","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-iowa","tag-iowa-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-newton","tag-sports","tag-william-byron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}