William Byron decided to make the most of NASCAR’s rare week off. In the sport’s 36-week calendar, this was, quite frankly, his second (and last) chance to take a vacation. More importantly, it allowed him to blow off some steam after what has been a disappointing season on the track. And in the process, he might have just given those wondering about his relationship status over the past two years something to talk about.
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The Hendrick Motorsports driver dropped a bunch of photos from his getaway on Instagram, and buried in there was a close, head-to-head selfie with social media influencer and model Kylan Darnell.
Byron has largely remained mum about his dating life since reportedly splitting with Erin Blaney (Ryan Blaney’s sister) in 2024. And neither Byron nor Darnell has said a word about what the picture means. That said, the latter did comment on the post twice.
Darnell, who has over 500k followers on Instagram, wrote, “my fav”, and again, “vroom vroom”, in a separate comment.
It’s easy to decipher what she meant by the first comment — she really enjoyed her time. But what “vroom vroom” meant, only they know.
Nothing’s official yet. But this is getting attention (with around 100 comments under Darnell’s comments on the post) because the last time Byron dated, the eyes of the NASCAR community followed them virtually everywhere.
Byron dated Erin Blaney for over four years. She’s Team Penske driver Ryan Blaney’s sister and former Cup Series driver Dave Blaney’s daughter. So this wasn’t some outsider relationship; it came from the sport itself. They started dating privately back in October 2019. So privately that Ryan reportedly didn’t even know until a friend clued him in 2020, mid-season.
Ryan Blaney didn’t really mind the fact that they kept it a secret. In an interview that year, he admitted, “I mean, people always ask me, ‘Are you mad that Will is dating your sister?’ I don’t care, she’s 22 and can do whatever she wants. And I like him. So it’s all good.”
Once it became public, Byron and Blaney were everywhere together. Races, Victory Lane, all of it. They were one of the sport’s go-to couples for years. Then, around spring 2024, it ended, without either of them making the breakup official.
They stopped following each other online. William Byron came to the 2024 NASCAR Awards by himself. He skipped Ryan Blaney‘s wedding later that year, even though plenty of his close friends in the garage were there.
The breakup also aligned with Byron and Ryan Blaney going head-to-head for a championship. Both made the Championship 4 in 2023. The Penske driver won it. Byron finished fourth.
Insiders floated the idea that after all those years together, the relationship between Byron and Blaney just wasn’t heading toward anything more, so it ran its course. Since then, Byron’s basically been considered single, and he hasn’t given fans much else to go on.
The now speculated special girl in his life, Darnell, isn’t from a racing background at all. She won Miss Ohio Teen USA and went on to represent the state at Miss Teen USA 2022, finishing in the Top 16 and taking home the Fan Favorite award.
From there, she became a known name on TikTok during the “Bama Rush” wave, posting about sorority recruitment and campus life at the University of Alabama. Her videos pulled in tens of millions of likes, which made her one of the more recognizable faces to come out of that whole moment online.
Whether this turns into something real or just stays a vacation photo between friends, nobody knows yet. But given how quiet William Byron’s kept things since 2024, it didn’t take much to make this one of the biggest off-track stories from NASCAR’s week off.