THREE TO GO: With three races left in the regular season, William Byron is third in the NASCAR Cup Series driver points standings, 96 markers behind the leader. While the Charlotte, North Carolina, native is hoping to secure his first Cup Series regular-season championship, he’s still having a career-best season. To this point, Byron leads the series in wins (four), average starting position (9.65), stage wins (seven) and laps run in the top five (2,688). He also has led a single-season career-best 810 laps (second-most). The 25-year-old driver’s eight top-five finishes and 11 top-10s are both tied for the third-most in the sport’s top division. In addition, Byron ranks third in average running position (10.203) and laps run in the top 10 (3,617), respectively.
HISTORY MAKER: While this is only the third time that the Cup Series has competed on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, Byron has made history at the famed venue. In 2017, Byron made his first trip to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. While battling for a championship, Byron became the youngest driver to win a major race at the historic 2.5-mile oval at 19 years, seven months and 23 days.
WHAT’S IN A NUMBER?: Byron would love to kiss the bricks again this weekend, and if he does, he will add to the already lengthy legacy the No. 24 has at Indianapolis. Dating back to 1994, Jeff Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard 400 before going on to win the crown-jewel event four more times in the No. 24 – the most by a car number at the famed track. A victory would also bring the iconic number closer to the total win mark set by a car number in the Cup Series, currently tied for fourth at 101 wins with the No. 3. The No. 24 is behind the No. 2 with 102 wins, the No. 43 with 200 wins and the No. 11 with 230 wins on the all-time list.
FUGLE FILES: Crew chief Rudy Fugle is set to make his third start on top of the pit box at the Indianapolis Road Course this Sunday. In his two previous starts, Fugle and the No. 24 team captured the pole in the inaugural race in 2021 and have been in contention to win in both showings. In fact, the team has the fourth-best average running position (10.33) in the two races on the road course layout. However, misfortunate has struck the team late, once due to the curbing of the track coming up and the second due to an on-track incident in the closing laps. All told, Fugle has 25 national series starts on road courses (15 in the Cup Series, three in the Xfinity Series and seven in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series). He earned a road course win in the truck ranks in 2015. One of those seven truck starts was also with Byron where the duo raced to a 10th-place finish at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in 2016.
PIT ROAD PROWESS: After 23 races in the 2023 season, the No. 24 pit crew remains in the top spot with the fastest average four-tire pit stop time of 10.991 seconds. The No. 24 pit crew consists of Spencer Bishop (jackman), Jeff Cordero (front-tire changer), Orane Ossowski (rear-tire changer), Ryan Patton (tire carrier) and Landon Walker (fueler).
BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA: Traveling to Indianapolis, Indiana for this Sunday’s Cup Series race, one crew member of the No. 24 team calls this their home track. Joining the team for the 2022 season, engineer Ryan Kelly hails from Avon, Indiana, just over 10 miles away from the track. An engineering graduate of Purdue University of Indianapolis, Kelly interned at Andretti Autosport, collecting two Indy 500 wins, before transitioning to his role in NASCAR.
AT IT AGAIN WITH AXALTA: For the fourth time in the 2023 season, Axalta will be back onboard Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. This is Axalta’s 31st year of partnership with Hendrick Motorsports. The company has been a primary partner for two of Byron’s wins this year – the May victory at Darlington Raceway and the July triumph at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
William Byron, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, on his thoughts for Indianapolis: “I think road course races are somewhere we can improve on this season. We’ve been working hard to do that and I think we’ve made improvements with each one. This weekend is a little bit different since it’s not a traditional road course. It has tight corners and straightaways, which makes for more contact between cars. With that, you can expect the aggression level to increase later in the race and for more people to get into each other to get every position they can. We’ve experienced that before, but hopefully this weekend we put ourselves in the right positions, are able to run the race we want and stay out of harms way to get a good finish."
Rudy Fugle, crew chief of the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, on the mentality of the team this week: “We’ve had a trying couple of races these last few weeks but there’s no quit in this team. We keep bringing fast race cars and doing what we can to get good results, some things just happen though. Indy (Road Course) is another track where we’ve ran well and circumstances at the end have taken us out of contention. We’ll go to the track this weekend, do our normal processes and give it everything we have. Last week is behind us and we’re focused on the three in front of us now."
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