If there is one driver who desperately needs a turnaround to rescue his 2026 season, it is William Byron. A rough stretch of finishes has chipped away at both momentum and confidence, and his 35th-place result at Talladega last weekend only made things worse. Suddenly, the 28-year-old who was firmly locked into the title conversation is staring at a reality he has rarely had to confront.
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“I mean, I had that conversation with myself this week, just, you know, it was a bit of a shock coming after Talladega, just seeing how far we’d fallen in the points, just, you know, two out of three weeks, just not a lot of points. So it’s, that’s been a struggle. But yeah, I just got a reset,” Byron said in a media availability ahead of the Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Two poor points-scoring races in a short stretch have erased the cushion the No. 24 team once had. And the frustrating part is how quickly things unravelled, especially amid HMS’s broader rough patch. Byron had become one of the safest bets in the garage, rarely slipping outside the top tier of the standings.
The No. 24 now sits 207 points behind Tyler Reddick, who has been in a class of his own this season with five wins through ten races. That is a staggering deficit for a driver who entered 2026 as one of the pre-season title favourites, having reached the Championship 4 in each of the last three consecutive seasons.
He further arrived in 2026 as a two-time defending Daytona 500 champion, having joined an exclusive group of just five drivers to win the Great American Race in back-to-back years.
William Byron fell to 11th in the standings after the wreck at Talladega. He's looking to rebound here in Texas as he seemed a little surprised he has fallen out of the top-10 in points. Race coverage starts at 2p ET on FS1.
The month of April did him no favors. A 30th-place finish at Bristol drained valuable points, and then the early Talladega exit, sidelined by the “Big One” in Stage Two, deepened the hole considerably. Across those two events, Byron managed almost nothing in the standings – wiping out the goodwill earned at Kansas the week prior, where he had salvaged a solid seventh-place run – watching rivals build separation while his team searched for answers.
Still, he doesn’t sound defeated. He knows the playoff format can flip circumstances quickly, especially when the field tightens later in the year.
“You know, really, when you look at the chase format, you know, I think that there’s, it sets up well, if you can just be in the top, you know, 10, really, you know, look at, look at how many points you can gain or lose in 10 weeks. So it’s, yeah, just about trying to get to that part of the season,” the 28-year-old added.
The focus now is simple: survive the rough patch, stay in range, and make sure the No. 24 Chevrolet is still relevant when the championship fight truly begins. And given what unfolded at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend, things could change quickly under the Fort Worth sun.
Can Byron turn Texas into a reset button?
It is no secret that the 1.5-mile track has quietly been one of Byron’s stronger venues, even if the results don’t always tell a straightforward story. He claimed a victory here in September 2023, taking the lead on a late restart with six laps remaining to deliver Hendrick Motorsports’ historic 300th Cup Series win.
Beyond that singular triumph, Byron carries the second-best career average finish among active Cup drivers at Texas, at 11.4. Still, the week-to-week unpredictability makes it difficult to know which version of Byron will show up.
That uncertainty matters at a place like Texas, where clean air often decides everything. The track may look wide, but passing remains treacherous once the field spreads out. Drivers who miss the preferred groove can quickly lose grip, and mistakes tend to come fast: spins, tire failures, and sudden momentum swings are common.
For Byron, track position could be the difference between another frustrating afternoon and a genuine return to form. And if practice is any indicator, the No. 24 team arrived in Fort Worth firing. Byron was the fastest driver in Saturday’s lone Cup Series practice session, pacing the field at 189.294 mph and topping every long-run average category, which is a clear signal that his car has pace even if the qualifying lap ultimately placed him 15th on the grid.
Moreover, Hendrick Motorsports, for all the organisation’s early-season turbulence, remains the benchmark franchise at this track. The team has won 12 races at Texas, more than any other organisation in Cup history, and three of the last five runnings have been claimed by HMS drivers: Larson in 2021, Byron in 2023, and Chase Elliott last spring.
So the stage is set for a reset. Whether Byron seizes it is the question that matters most right now. It would be a significant mistake to count him out.
