Andrew Ravens Sat, October 17, 2026 at 9:43 PM UTC · 2 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement William Byron is not counting on a championship in 2026. The Hendrick Motorsports driver called his title chances "kind of a Hail Mary" late in the NASCAR Cup Series Chase.
SiriusXM NASCAR posted the clip on X . Byron spoke at the team's fan day. Hendrick held its fan day on Oct. 9 , before the Charlotte race.
"I think for us, where we stand in the points, it's kind of a Hail Mary for us to get to first. But we never lose doubt. I think for us it's about trying to win races."
Byron is now 13th in the standings, 208 points behind teammate Kyle Larson . He has not won a Cup race this season.
That is a big change from last year. Byron won the 2025 regular-season championship . He led 1,330 laps in 2025. This season, he has led 176 laps in 32 starts.
"And I think it's trying to get back to the form of being in contention to win races. We led a lot of laps last year, and this year has been a struggle for us."
Byron said the team has kept working to fix it.
"But honestly, I think we're learning a lot. I think we learned a lot these last few months. And we've been able to put together solid results. It's not from a lack of effort."
He said that work is starting to show in practice.
"I feel like we're in the simulator almost every other day, and we're working on it, you know, the things that we need to do better. And, honestly, it's starting to show on Saturdays."
Byron pointed to the race weekend before the fan day, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He was fastest in practice there, and finished sixth in the race.
"Like, last week we were fastest in practice and had a really good practice session. Kind of went a little bit the wrong way on race day on some things."
Byron said the No. 24 team has good long-run pace. He said it still needs to clean up details such as restarts and pit road execution.
At Charlotte on Oct. 11, Byron was caught in a Lap 77 crash with teammate Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace . He finished 39th. MotorBiscuit reported that Bowman apologized for the wreck .
The Cup Series now heads to Phoenix Raceway, where Byron finished seventh in March. Sunday's race is the first of the final four in the Chase, the last stretch of the motorsports season for NASCAR's top series.
Source: Sport
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