William Byron: 16 Wins, Two Daytona 500s, and the Winless Year He Is Trying to End at Martinsville
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 24.
The Short Version
William Byron is the driver of the number 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, and he is one of the most accomplished drivers in the sport without a Cup Series championship. He has 16 career Cup wins, back-to-back Daytona 500 trophies in 2024 and 2025, and a 2025 regular-season title. He is also stuck on something he has not dealt with since 2019: a winless season. With two races left in 2026, he goes to Martinsville this Sunday at the one track where he has been better than anybody.
From a Simulator to a Stock Car
Byron was born November 29, 1997, in Charlotte, North Carolina, which makes him a rare thing in the Cup garage: a kid who grew up in the middle of NASCAR country and did not come from a racing family. He got hooked at six years old watching stock cars on television. He did not get in a real race car until he was 15.
What he did instead was race online. Byron spent his early teens on iRacing, the simulator a lot of real Cup drivers use, and he piled up more than a hundred wins there before he ever strapped into anything with a motor. That is not a cute footnote. It is how he learned race craft, and it is the reason he was ready the moment he finally got a seat.
In 2012 he started running Legends cars at 15 and won 33 races and the Young Lions division championship in his first year. From there it was a straight line up. He won the K&N Pro Series East title in 2015. In 2016 he moved to the Truck Series and won seven races as a rookie, which broke the series record for rookie wins. In 2017 he jumped to Xfinity and won the championship and Rookie of the Year in the same season. He was in a Cup car full time in 2018 and took Cup Rookie of the Year too.
The Signature Moments
His first Cup win took a while. It came on August 29, 2020, in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, in overtime, after a night of big wrecks. Six months later he won at Homestead-Miami by leading the final 58 laps. Those two wins told you everything about the range: he can survive a superspeedway and he can flat-out dominate an intermediate.
William Byron won the 2020 Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona five years ago today. It was his first Cup series win.
- NASCAR Legends (@LegendsNascar) August 29, 2025
Then came 2023, when he won six races and led the Cup Series in victories. Then came the big one. He won the 2024 Daytona 500, and in 2025 he won it again, coming from ninth on the final lap after a crash ahead of him opened the door. That made him the fifth driver in history to win the Daytona 500 in back-to-back years, joining Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, Sterling Marlin and Denny Hamlin. He is also the youngest driver ever to win it twice, and that second one gave Hendrick Motorsports a record 10th Daytona 500.
By the Numbers
Here is the career so far. Every figure below is a Cup Series number.
The 2026 Problem, and the Track That Could Fix It
2026 has been the hardest year Byron has had in a long time. He has no wins, six top-five finishes, and no poles through 34 races. He led 178 laps all season after leading more than 1,300 in 2025. He has won at least one race every year since 2020, and that streak is now down to its last two chances.
The good news is where those chances are. His runner-up finish behind Kyle Larson at Talladega on October 25 was his best result of the year and moved him up three spots to 11th in points. Now the series goes to Martinsville, where Byron has three wins, seven top-fives and 10 top-10s in 17 starts, and where he has led 670 laps, more than at any other track on the schedule. He won there last fall. He has taken three of the nine Martinsville races run in the Next Gen car. Green flag is Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
Off the Track
Byron is an Eagle Scout and a Liberty University graduate, and he studied business communication there online while he was already racing for a living. Liberty has been on his car for years because of it. He is open about his Christian faith and has said he sees racing as the place he is supposed to be. In 2021 his mother Dana was diagnosed with a lymphoma affecting her brain, and he shared the news of her recovery that July. He signed a contract extension with Hendrick Motorsports in May 2025 that runs through 2029.
The Bottom Line
William Byron came up through a video game and turned it into two Daytona 500s before he turned 28. The championship is the only thing missing, and 2026 has been a reminder that nothing in this sport is owed to anybody. He gets two more swings at keeping the streak alive, and the first one is at the track he owns.
Ride with the number 24. A few in stock right now:
- William Byron #24 2025 Martinsville 500 Winner Tee
- William Byron #24 2025 Daytona 500 Back-to-Back Champion Hoodie
- William Byron #24 2025 Regular Season Champion Tee
- William Byron 2026 Race Schedule Tee
- William Byron #24 Flame Mesh Hat, Black and Yellow
See it all in the William Byron collection. New driver spotlights drop every Thursday.
