{"id":121016,"date":"2025-08-30T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121016\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T15:00:17","slug":"byron-tells-rival-team-to-wake-up-after-close-call-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121016\/","title":{"rendered":"Byron tells rival team to &#8220;wake up&#8221; after close call in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early in practice for the 16 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff drivers, regular season champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/william-byron\/142818\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">William Byron<\/a> was exiting Turn 2 when he encountered an unexpected roadblock.<\/p>\n<p>Byron, who is tied with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/hendrick-motorsports\/70\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Hendrick Motorsports<\/a> teammate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/kyle-larson\/17135\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Kyle Larson<\/a> for the most points after the reset, was rapidly approaching <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/josh-berry\/1176\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Josh Berry<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/chris-buescher\/17348\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Chris Buescher<\/a> as they exited the pits.<\/p>\n<p>While Berry was a non-issue, Buescher kept coming up, merging onto the racing line directly in front of the No. 24 Chevrolet. Byron abruptly slowed to avoid contact, while Buescher moved out of the way the moment he realized what was happening.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Holy sh*t,&#8221; radioed Byron. &#8220;That was like 800 pounds of brake pressure not to (expletive) wreck everybody back there. Tell Herm to (expletive) wake up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Herm&#8217; in this situation refers to Buescher&#8217;s spotter, Mike Herman Jr.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other than that moment, there was no notable drama for any other playoff driver in practice, which took place very early in the morning at Darlington Raceway. The track opened for practice just after 9 a.m., EST.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/bubba-wallace\/18588\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Bubba Wallace<\/a> was the fastest playoff driver over the course of a single lap, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/ross-chastain\/17535\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Ross Chastain<\/a> led the way in five and ten-lap averages. Byron emerged as the best driver in 15-lap and 20-lap averages, while 2023 series champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/ryan-blaney\/18336\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Ryan Blaney<\/a> showed the best pace over 25-lap and 30-lap averages. His Penske teammate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/austin-cindric\/19256\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Austin Cindric<\/a> was right there with him at the end of 30 laps.<\/p>\n<p>Read Also:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>In this article<\/p>\n<p>Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n<p>    Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early in practice for the 16 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff drivers, regular season champion William Byron was exiting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[77651,72096,72097,3141,425,6327,99,15119],"class_list":["post-121016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-close-call-for-william-byron-in-darlington-cup-practice-wake-up","tag-darlington-ii","tag-darlington-raceway","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports","tag-william-byron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}