July 14, 2025

William Byron had a mostly consistent and solid performance during Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Byron began the race from third place, but then quickly passed Chase Briscoe for second after just the third lap of the race in the first stage. Byron held second for the rest of the stage until he decided to pit before the end of the stage to keep up with Shane Van Gisbergen. Byron ended the stage in fourth and still scored stage points. In the second stage, Byron most of the time held the second position behind Van Gisbergen, until Briscoe made it past Byron for second once again on lap 42. The No. 24 Chevrolet driver then went ahead to pit road early before the end of the stage once again on lap 52, and held on to finish the stage in 10th, gaining one extra stage point. In the final stage, Byron was quiet and kept his car clean, but mostly kept to the same strategy as Van Gisbergen, who ended up being the dominant driver of the day. This also meant that during the last couple of laps, Byron ended up on older tires and did not have the grip to keep his car ahead of those with fresher tires. As a result, Byron ended up falling back to eighth during the checkered flag for the second Sonoma top-10 run of his career. Byron did finish well enough to maintain the regular season points lead as the Cup Series will next head to Dover Motor Speedway.--Sean Engel - RotoBaller
Source: NASCAR.com