Dale Earnhardt Jr. Declares William Byron “Has Eclipsed” Kyle Larson as the Best HMS Driver

Hendrick Motorsports top guy after the most recent performances is William Byron not Kyle Larson according to Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Declares William Byron “Has Eclipsed” Kyle Larson as the Best HMS Driver

Kyle Larson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and William Byron (Via IMAGO)

Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron was the biggest loser of the day at Michigan International Speedway, as he lost the race owing to lower fuel to Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin. He had one of the best cars of the day, lead 98 laps, won a stage, but just messed up the execution at the end. Still this performance was enough to convince Dale Earnhardt Jr. that the No:24 is the best team.

William Byron has been one of the best racers of the season, alongside teammate Kyle Larson. Though he has won just one race, Daytona 500, he has been super consistent with nine top 10s from 15 starts. At the same time the No:5 team scored three wins, and 11 top 10 finishes. This proves, the veteran has been the better driver of the two, but according to Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. the recent form shows a different story.

Yeah, the last couple of weeks, I think that he’s [Byron] eclipsed Larson as the best car at Hendrick Motorsports. Nobody’s really been able to say that for a long time. Larson was so good throughout the majority of this season, but he’s stumbled and kind of been kind of neutralized a little bit over the last couple of weeks.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on the Prime Video post-race show.

Since the failed Indy 500-Coke 600 double duty weekend, Kyle Larson has found himself in a tough spot and hasn’t been able to get back the dominant form he has been in earlier this season. This comment came, despite the fact that Larson still finished inside the top-5 while the wrong execution caused Byron finishing outside the top-25.

Though the ex-HMS driver doesn’t expect this streak the dominance of Byron over Larson to continue, as the latter is too good to be a second driver at HMS. It’s the moment for the latter to shine, score some wins taking advantage of the situation and increase the points gap towards his teammate, placing himself as a championship contender.

We know that won’t last forever, but Byron needs to take advantage of that and try to go out there and get his wins. He’s got a really good shot to separate himself from that pack and put himself in a championship contender form.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. added.

William Byron shared his feelings about the race loss

Talking about the poor execution costing him the race victory at the end, William Byron admitted that there is nothing he could have done at the moment and it stings to lose in a good car. He revealed that the No:24 car burned too much fuel than they expected towards the end of the race, and got caught up in an unfortunate situation.

William Byron
William Byron (Via IMAGO)

That one you can’t really do a lot about… It really stings, but we had a really good car. I thought we executed well. It seemed like we waited a little on fuel [during] the last stop. [We] just burned more. Not able to do much about that. It is what it is.

William Byron said.

There are a lot of positives to take for Byron and team, considering they have been able to field a strong car and it just a miscalculation regarding the fuel load that costed them. Going into next week at Mexico City, a road course race gives him more confidence and an advantage as he is at the moment the best RC racer of the team. It would be interesting to see if they will pull of a redemption run on Sunday.

Also Read: Kyle Larson laments poor performance at Michigan, admits HMS Chevy ‘wasn’t fast enough’