William Byron can lead 485 laps at Charlotte and still go home empty-handed. He can rattle off four straight top-10s and still sit 160 points behind his own teammate. That’s where he is heading into the Bank of America 400: doing a lot right while Kyle Larson makes the same job look almost unfairly easy.
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Byron didn’t sugarcoat it when he talked with Peter Stratta. The No. 24 just hasn’t had the speed or the balance that Larson’s No. 5 has. Coming from a guy who shares a garage with the driver setting the pace in the 2026 Chase, that’s a pretty telling admission. It’s not about effort. The effort just isn’t turning into the same results.
“On the 24, we’re trying really hard. We haven’t quite had the speed that they’ve had, and we haven’t quite had, like, the balance and everything put together with it. But we’re close, and we’ve been in the top 10 the last four weeks and just gaining on it,” William Byron said.
Notice the word “close.” On a normal stretch of the season, four top-10s in a row would look like a team hitting its stride. In a 10-race title fight, it can feel like treading water while somebody else vanishes over the horizon.
Larson’s Chase so far: fifth, first, second, first, second. That 2.2 average finish is the best through five races of any postseason in NASCAR history. Two wins took him from 55 points behind Denny Hamlin at the start of the Chase to the points lead, where he now sits 40 clear of Hamlin.
Byron’s story reads differently. He was 37th at Darlington, then bounced back with a fourth at Gateway and four top-10s in a row. Through October 7, he’s the only driver to finish in the top 10 in all seven of this season’s 1.5-mile races. That’s not someone who’s lost the plot. And yet he’s 12th in the Chase standings, 160 back of Larson.
The gap shows up when a race gets messy. At Kansas, Larson led 235 of 267 laps. At Las Vegas, handling problems and a long pit stop briefly put him a lap down, and he still came back to finish second. Again and again, the No. 5 team finds a way to turn speed into points, even on days that look like they’re falling apart.
William Byron is hunting for that extra cushion, and he thinks it’s in the details: restarts, pit stops, execution, adjustments. Sounds like routine racing stuff, but when the car isn’t quite right and the field is this tight, those things decide results. A team with more speed can absorb a mistake. A team still looking for speed can’t afford to give anything away.
“So, we just got to find a little bit more and just got to get all those details right, you know, all the little things: restarts, execution, you know, the right pit stops at the right time, the right adjustments at the right time,” Byron said.
That’s the job for Byron and crew chief Rudy Fugle. They don’t have to rebuild the No. 24 overnight. They have to turn it from a car that reliably finishes well into one that’s a real threat at the front while Larson is out there fighting for wins.
The fall race is back on Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval, which is a familiar stage for this question. The last time the fall event ran on the oval was 2017. It moved to the Roval from 2018 through 2025. Byron has four straight top-10s on the Charlotte oval and one pole in 10 starts, but no win. Larson has one Charlotte oval victory, back in 2021.
Rain wiped out Saturday’s practice and qualifying, so NASCAR set the lineup using its rule book. Larson starts first, Byron sixth. Byron will have a shot to move up, but he’ll do it without the usual final practice to dial in the car.
Charlotte is a good test because Byron has already shown he can run well there. What he hasn’t done is close the deal. And since the Chase runs on cumulative points instead of eliminations, there’s no clean slate coming. Every race counts, and every point Larson takes makes Byron’s climb steeper.
William Byron’s comments aren’t a white flag. They’re a diagnosis. The No. 24 is close, but the standings make it clear that close doesn’t cut it when your teammate is in the middle of one of the best five-race stretches NASCAR has seen in the Chase era.
William Byron knows how to lead laps at Charlotte. This weekend, he has to turn that speed into the result that’s been missing, and maybe give Larson something to check his mirror about.