William Byron 1-on-1: On his 'weak' Daytona 500 burnout, shoutout from Jake Gyllenhaal

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NEW YORK — William Byron didn’t even get to celebrate winning the Daytona 500 with a big party on the beach.

With the race postponed a day because of rain, Byron had to fly to New York City late Monday night for a series of appearances Tuesday.

FOX Sports caught up with the 2024 Daytona 500 winner about 18 hours after his victory, where NASCAR had to go to the video before ruling Byron was inches ahead of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman when the caution came out (for a wreck involving Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric) with less than a lap remaining, awarding Byron the biggest of his 11 career Cup wins.

Did you get a chance to celebrate? This is Tuesday morning — are you hurting a little?

I’m hurting a little. We didn’t do a ton of celebrating, just with my guys in the tech shed. So it was fun to see the car in person and see it in its natural state before it gets put away for a year [as part of Daytona International Speedway tours]. So that was cool. And then we got here late [Monday] night and a couple hours of sleep. 

You haven’t finished a Daytona 500 before. So when you got knocked out in the past, did you sit and watch in the motorhome? Did you get the heck out of the track? How did you spend those hours when you were already knocked out?

It was different every year. A couple years, I did stay and watch the rest of the race. And I would always watch it on the way back home or whatnot. But typically our season has started really rocky for us. We just typically start the first couple of races pretty bad. And this year, it just felt different. Even with some of the struggles through qualifying and the duels, I felt like we still had the pace to do it. And it’s just a matter of being patient and being in the right spot.

Some would say finishing outside the top 20 in your first six Daytona 500s is unlucky, but are you one of those who believe you create your own luck?

A lot of it is there’s a lot of strategy to restrictor-plate [Daytona and Talladega style of] racing and the intensity and just knowing how to push at the right times and the right lane choice. So we went over all those things. But we had been in position at other speedways, but not in the 500. It was always the July race [at Daytona] or the Talladega races or Atlanta. It seemed like in the 500, we were never in the right places to take advantage.

After a crash in the duels, when did you know that your backup car was capable of winning?

In practice, I didn’t really feel like we had a ton of speed. But we were a really good pusher. And I feel like a lot of times, that’s all you really need in the 500 is just to be able to push at the right time. So I felt like even in the stages, we could push really well. Really, the first time we got the lead was on the last restart, and we had great pushes from Austin Cindric. He did a really good job of pushing me straight and kind of getting the bottom line going. And then I felt like because of that, we kind of broke away. And then there was obviously the late run surge by Ross [Chastain] and they had a big run coming to the trioval.

What did you do Saturday and Sunday with no practice Saturday and then the race getting postponed Sunday because of rain?

I went to a movie with my mom on Sunday. I went out with some friends on Saturday night. My good buddy Stefan [Parsons], he finished sixth in the truck race [Friday night]. He had a great run, so he was excited on Saturday to celebrate that. I’m excited for him this year and see what he does in that truck. And really just kind of hung out with my family on Sunday.

Did you have a feeling that with the forecast you weren’t going to race on Sunday so you could go out a little bit on a Saturday night?

A little bit. Sometimes it kind of eases the nerves a little. But you don’t have any race weekends like that where you’re almost guaranteed to not race on Sunday. But I think Monday, we knew the weather was really good. We knew the track was going to be fresh and I felt like we had a good gameplan for what our car needed to handle like.

What movie did you see?

The [Bob] Marley movie. That was good. I really like the bio-doc movies. I loved the Queen one and the Elton John one. So this one was cool.

You can imagine that the guys in the care center after the big crash [that was triggered in part by Byron] are like, ‘We’re here and the guys who caused it are still running.’ Can you relate to that?

For sure. You feel really bad inside when a wreck like that happens that you feel like you had a part in. Obviously, I felt like I’d been taking the pushes really, really well throughout the race. But I feel like it just got really crossed up in front of me where the 22 [of Joey Logano] came down a little bit and I was getting pushed by Alex and we got off-center. And then I shot into the 6 [of Brad Keselowski]. So I hated that. I have some making up to do to earn some trust back from some guys. But I don’t know what you do in that situation. My hands are locked on the wheel as tight as I can and just trying to keep the car straight. The pushes get pretty wild at the end. That part, my crew chief had to kind of talk me out of thinking about that going through the red flag.

Take me from when the yellow comes out to when [crew chief] Rudy [Fugle] tells you on the radio that you won?

He didn’t really say what was going on. He had so much emotion, and I felt like in a good way. But I wasn’t sure — I wasn’t sure if he was upset that we lost or whatnot. But I knew we had crossed the line to take the white [flag]. I just didn’t know where we were positioned compared to Alex [Bowman]. He had a big run. He would have cleared me by Turn 1, I think. I just was in the right place at the right time. And really, I think the block [I made] getting into the trioval was probably a key, and I felt like there wasn’t enough room for Ross to go to the bottom. But I wasn’t able to really check that before I made that move. So I just had to kind of trust it. 

Have you talked to Alex? 

Yeah, we talked after the race. We worked really well together the last 10 or 15 laps. It was pretty cool to see. A lot of the Hendrick cars were up front, so I felt like any of the four of us could have won at the end.

On the burnout, did you get stuck in the grass? Do you wish you had that to do over?

Yeah, my burnout was really weak. I wasn’t planning on doing a burnout. I just wanted to do the whole loop through the grass. I felt like that was always the coolest. But the grass is really wet, so when I slid off the banking, I just did a 180 and slid backwards. It was pretty lame, but we’ll take it. And then my team came out there and they saved the day [with the celebration]. They made it exciting. 

Best texts you’ve gotten so far, most surprising texts?

I don’t know of a text, but the whole Jake Gyllenhaal thing [on Instagram] was pretty cool. So he was interacting with me on social. And I guess he was watching the 500 yesterday. It’d be nice to have him out for a race. That’d be cool.

You learned your initial skills in online racing (with a gaming product called iRacing). So some people would think how hard can it be if you can learn it on a computer. Can you explain how it helps, in what areas of racing?

It’s a really complex answer, because I feel like the things I learned on iRacing helped me with my race craft and my speed and just learning how to get the most out of the car. But when you get in a race car, there’s so many senses you have to go through — your senses are heightened. There’s a lot more pressure. Crashing hurts. There’s a lot of things that don’t directly relate, but you have to be able to translate from one to the other. And with sim [the high-tech racing simulators] being as big as it is now [to set up the cars], I feel like the iRacing was always an advantage for me because I felt like I could feel the car really well.

Do you have a gift to yourself? I assume there’s some good bonus coin for winning the Daytona 500?

I don’t know. I’m just going to go home and eat some ice cream and maybe some Fruit Loops and just enjoy it. I’ll probably watch the whole race back. I usually do that. 

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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