Byron the biggest loser as Talladega last lap burns Hendrick teammates

The final lap at Talladega Superspeedway turned sour quickly for Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron.

It started off well enough with Larson and Byron leading in the inside lane off Turn 2, but then Larson ran out of fuel and had to get out of the way of the charging pack. Byron, meanwhile, briefly took the lead of the inside line, but the loss of momentum from Larson having to pull out of the way was enough for the outside line to charge by.

Then it was Byron’s turn to suffer misfortune. He was third on the inside lane coming off Turn 4 as the field ran side-by-side when the pushing and shoving claimed the No. 24 as its latest target. Byron was spun off the bumper of Carson Hocevar and went from a potential top-five finish to 25th.

“It’s just the way that it goes, that part of things,” Byron said. “I felt like I was in the right position there on the bottom lane, and we just couldn’t get linked up off of Turn 4, and those guys pushed past us. The No. 5 ran out of fuel there down the backstretch and broke up all the energy and couldn’t quite get the pushes to go our way there at the very end.”

Larson finished 26th.

“He was very sure about the numbers that he had in front of him, that we could make it with flipping the switch where we did,” said Larson on crew chief Cliff Daniels. “It’s unfortunate it didn’t work out there. It started giving me a warning there in the middle of Turns 1 and 2, and then down the back it started stumbling, so I got out of the way. I don’t know, it’s probably one of the more bummer superspeedway finishes that I’ve had because we were once again in contention and were right where I wanted to be, but it didn’t work out. We’ll keep putting ourselves in contention and it’ll eventually work out.”

The finish, while disappointing, didn’t dent Larson’s title hopes. He fell to the cutline but gained one point, putting him 36 points above teammate Byron.

“You’ve got to assume that one of those guys is probably going to win below the cutline; they’re all really good there,” Larson said. “Then you’ve got to fight with the No. 20 throughout the night and try to outpoint him. We’ve got a decent Martinsville package – as does everybody in the Round of 8. – so it’ll be a fight. Even if I didn’t win there, I wish we had had those 20 spots at least. That part of it sucks, but we executed a great day today, and we’ll try to do the same next week.”

The end of Sunday’s race swung things dramatically for Byron. He was 16 points below the cutline on the final lap, going down the backstretch, before ending up 36 behind Larson.

It was the second straight race that Byron wrecked from inside the top five. The regular season point leader goes to Martinsville Speedway outside of a transfer spot.

“It looks like we definitely have to go there and try to win the race,” Byron said. “We’ve put ourselves in a position to win these last two, so I don’t see why we’ll be any different there, but we have to regroup and go there and try to win.”