William Byron alarm bells raised after Hendrick | Sports News

Kevin Harvick has expressed concern for William Byron after he had a tough exhibiting on the NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Byron endured a troublesome outing on Sunday, struggling from the beginning after qualifying thirty fourth after which dropping three further positions on account of unapproved changes.

Byron was lapped by lap 38 and located himself two laps down by lap 108, finally ending 5 laps off the lead in Thirtieth place. He completed simply forward of Cody Ware and a number of other different drivers who encountered crash injury or mechanical points. Meanwhile, Alex Bowman additionally had a disastrous race on his NASCAR return.

Despite a number of setup adjustments, the No. 24 group was unable to generate significant pace or aggressive tempo because the race progressed. Byron by no means ran inside the highest 15, marking one of essentially the most difficult full-race performances of the Next Gen period.

It was solely the second Cup Series race since 2022 through which Byron failed to finish a single lap inside the highest 15, the opposite coming on the Chicago Street Course final season when mechanical points ended his day after one lap.

Harvick reacted to Byron having his worst end of the season on his podcast, ‘Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.’

“He still never led a lap at Bristol,” Kevin Harvick started. “The stat still stands, and it’s there for a reason. Look, I’ve been to Bristol and been lapped five times and come back to the shop and have no reason to understand why you got lapped five times in the Gen 7 car. It’s going to happen.

“They changed the steering rack before the race. That didn’t fix anything. He got lapped early in the back of the pack and never really gathered any momentum throughout the whole day. Tough day for the 24 that we haven’t seen out of that car in a long, long time. That one definitely raises some eyebrows as to why they were that bad. But they aren’t that good typically at Bristol compared to a lot of places that we go.”

Byron has now made 16 begins within the NASCAR Cup Series Bristol Motor Speedway race, together with his best outcomes on the monitor coming through back-to-back third-place finishes in 2021 and 2022. His Thirtieth-place end on Sunday marked his third-worst profession outcome at Bristol, trailing solely a Thirty fifth-place run in May 2024 and a Thirty eighth-place end in September 2020.

Following the race, NASCAR.com’s Zack Albert listed Byron among the many day’s three greatest losers, reflecting a troublesome outing for the No. 24 group. “Bryon dropped to the rear of the field after adjustments to the steering system,” Albert wrote. “By Lap 37, he went a lap down. By the finish, he was five laps back and saddled with his worst result of the season so far.”

While Harvick’s considerations replicate the frustration of a troublesome Bristol outing for Byron, the broader image of his 2026 season stays robust. Through eight races, the 28-year-old has recorded 4 top-10 finishes, together with a third-place outcome at Las Vegas and a fifth-place end at Martinsville.

Byron’s present kind builds on a productive 2025 marketing campaign through which he opened the 12 months with a victory within the Daytona 500, secured the regular-season championship, and superior to the Championship 4 for a third consecutive season.