William Byron snapped a 35-race winless drought at Martinsville Speedway by taking Sunday’s Xfinity 500, a triumph that marked his fourth victory at NASCAR’s shortest track. The win also extended Hendrick Motorsports’ dominance at the 0.526-mile oval, where the team has now claimed 33 wins since its first victory there in 1984—a race that helped save the fledgling operation. Byron’s last win at Martinsville had come in the previous year’s event, ending a season in which he had struggled to find consistent success.
Byron led 362 laps of the 500-lap race, more than double the 356 laps he had led across the first 34 races of the campaign. Hendrick swept both Martinsville races in 2024, with teammate Chase Elliott winning the spring event. Elliott finished second in Sunday’s race, his best result since securing victory in May at Texas. He credited Byron’s tire management for creating the gap that proved decisive. “I was running as hard as I could go,” Elliott said. “William had that gap to play with, and he did a great job managing that.” The race saw six caution periods totaling 47 laps, though none affected the final 229 laps.
Byron’s 17th career win followed Kyle Larson, his Hendrick teammate, finishing second at Talladega the prior week. Hendrick has now won four of the last eight NASCAR Cup races, further cementing its reputation at Martinsville, where it has taken 33 of the 56 races held since 1984. The team’s success at the track dates back to its earliest days, when a single victory in 1984 helped stabilize the program.
In the championship standings, Larson never led a lap in Sunday’s race despite 11 lead changes among six drivers. He finished ninth, maintaining a 67-point advantage over Christopher Bell in second place. Denny Hamlin dropped to third, now 70 points behind, while Chase Briscoe, fourth in the standings, remains out of contention with an 84-point deficit to Larson. The victory at Martinsville, where Byron had gone winless since 2022, capped a season of intense preparation. “This is the hardest I have worked in my career,” he said. The win ended a streak that had lasted through 35 races, including a second-place finish at Talladega and multiple top-five results in recent weeks.
