William Byron breaks down Daytona 500 win after seeing replay of last lap wreck

After winning his second Daytona 500 win in a row, William Byron was unsure how he was the one to end up with the checkered flag. A day later and a few replays of the last lap later, the NASCAR driver has a much better understanding of what went down.

You can call it luck or you can say that William Byron was in position to win. There was controversy over the no-call for the last wreck. But that aside, the 24 earned this win. Byron might have gotten lucky but he didn’t luck into it, if you catch my drift.

When the wreck happened, Byron had just taken the lead position on the outside line, up against the wall. He had been up and down in the field throughout the race. While he found himself in the front often, he was at the mercy of which lane was dominant at the time. Late in the race, he was where he needed to be.

In other words, he put himself in position to get lucky. Still, even Willy B himself wasn’t quite sure how he had come out of that one with the win. Not until he watched it back. For starters, he didn’t check up.

“I’m in less shock about it now than I was then,” William Byron explained to Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “When I got a chance to watch it, it made a lot more sense in my head of kind of what happened. Then seeing the in-car camera, because I had an in-car and seeing that posted online. So, yeah it was pretty awesome.

“Obviously, I made the move to go to the third lane and just expecting to get a run off of [Turn] Four and then to see the crash and kind of be right up against the wall and get through it was good timing, for sure. But the way it all played out, I was in the gas and kind of going forward with momentum and that really propelled me past it. Honestly, I think if I had checked up, I think [Tyler] Reddick would have got to me and probably passed me. So, the fact that we had forward momentum going it was like perfect scenario we were almost clearing the wreck as it was happening.”

Indeed, it was the perfect scenario. As the field wrecked and Cole Custer took out Denny Hamlin and Austin Cindric, the outside line prevailed. Tyler Reddick came out behind William Byron and the two drove to the finish line.

Unforutnately, there was confusion. Both in the cars with drivers and in the stands with fans. Where was the caution flag? Why didn’t NASCAR throw it? Were they actually racing back to the line?

There were a lot of questions at the end of that race. A lot of those are going to have to be answered by NASCAR. Fans don’t know if they can trust the officiating at this point. We had one week of races that felt like they were run under different rules.

NASCAR should have told drivers ahead of time. Officials should have given a heads up that there would be a possibility of racing back to the line if conditions were right. Drivers would then be ready to at least react to a scenario like last night.