William Byron explains early overheating issues due to garbage bag across his grille

Early on William Byron had one of the fastest cars in the Pennzoil 400. Then a garbage bag came flying across his grille. At least, that is what appeared to be covering the front end of his NASCAR racecar.

Like a rock in water, William Byron started to fall through the field. After running top-5 to start the race, Byron had to hit pit road to remove the debris. By the time he did, he went down a lap, had to fight his way back, and finally finished P10.

Could today have been better? Yes. But given the situation, Byron made the most of his day in Las Vegas.

“It was huge,” Byron said of the debris, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “It seemed to get stuck somewhere underneath, I don’t really know. I don’t know, I just know my temps went from 250 or whatever to 350 in like ten seconds, so I’ve never had that happen.”

Byron gave a breakdown of how the debris affected the car. Once those temps shot up, he knew he was in trouble.

“Think it was on the front of the nose at first and we’ve got a black nose [on the car] so it’s probably really hard to tell that,” Byron continued. “Once it got farther up the nose then it overheated. It got to – it went from – it normally runs like low 200s or whatever and it got to 290 pretty quick and it would just climb one degree every half second and it got to 350. So, nothing we can do about that. Just the second half was just sloppy and me sliding through the box and just the whole thing. Still get a top-10, the car was super fast and we’ll go on to Phoenix.”

I had not seen a bag that big fly on a car before today when a huge bag covered the William Byron grille. Byron speaks about his luck. pic.twitter.com/zZxqX70t1w

— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) March 4, 2024

Tough day for William Byron, but he never gave up.

William Byron fights to finish top-10, Kyle Larson dominates in win

In my mind, there were five drivers and cars capable of winning today. William Byron, Kyle Busch, Corey LaJoie, Tyler Reddick, and Kyle Larson. The top two Hendrick cars felt like they were at the top of the field prior to Byron’s incident.

As for Busch, he was hit with a pit road penalty under green flag stops late in the race. That effectively took him out of contention, relegating him to the rear of the field. LaJoie had a top-5 car all day until he blew out a tire and sustained too much damage to continue.

So, that left Reddick and Larson to battle it out. Larson put up a big lead and just drove the hell out of his car. He had a rocket ship from Hendrick and he made the most of it. Even when Reddick looked like he was going to make a pass late, Larson held on to take the win, sweeping the stages as well.

William Byron didn’t get a chance to race against Larson for the win. However, there will be more races this season where the 24 and 5 cars are at the top of the Cup Series. This isn’t the last time they will be vying for the same checkered flag.