Dale Earnhardt Jr. SLAMS Hendrick Motorsports over “awful strategy” for William Byron at Darlington

Dale Earnhardt Jr. fired shots at Hendrick Motorsport's strategic blunder at Darlington that caused William Byron to lose out on victory.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. SLAMS Hendrick Motorsports over “awful strategy” for William Byron at Darlington

Dale Earnhardt Jr (via Newsweek), William Byron (via IMAGO)

William Byron suffered from a woeful ending at the Darlington Raceway as he barely missed out on the victory. Byron was on the trajectory for achieving a great finish if it weren’t for Hendrick Motorsports’ botched strategy towards the end. Upon this, the NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. has talked critically of the team that caused the 27-year-old to miss out on the victory to Denny Hamlin.

William Byron looked extremely strong since the beginning of the Cook Out Southern 500. The American led over 243 laps and could easily breeze past the chequered flag as the winner. However, with just 50 laps remaining during the green-flag pit cycle, the team decided to stick to a risky pit-stop strategy that enabled Denny Hamlin to ultimately overtake Byron.

Dale Jr. recalled the blunders by Hendrick Motorsports and sympathized with William Byron. The Hall of Famer recounted that Byron was enjoying a pretty comfortable lead over the rivals throughout the race. The 50-year-old reckoned that the team immediately started to count the probability of others short-pitting or arriving later than expected. Hendrick Motorsports couldn’t keep up with the strategy and blundered Byron’s re-entry on the track ahead of the rivals.

William is leading the race, he’s got a pretty comfortable lead over most of the field, William and his team are going to do some math to understand that as the other teams short pit or come to pit road first, he knows, ‘Okay, I can be out there X amount of laps before I need to pit and come back out on pit road still in front of these guys.’

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on Dale Jr. Download.

The 50-year-old believes that the disappointing call on Byron’s pit stop was simply the fault of Hendrick Motorsports. Dale Jr. guessed that over 12 people were configuring the best time to stop for the No. 24 driver and feeding the information to Rudy Fugle. However, as depicted by the results, Denny Hamlin emerged victorious after a better call from 23XI on pit-lane entry. The Hall of Famer insisted that there was not a lack of information for Fugle that caused the 27-year-old to miss out on the win.

There’s a couple of dudes sitting around, six-12 people and engineers, all kinds of people with laptops and big screens and calculating all of this information double-checking, verifying and sending that back to Rudy [Fugle] and his team on the pit box. …There was not a lack of information and it wasn’t a guess, Rudy had all of the details.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. added.

William Byron downplays Hendrick Motorsport’s blunder at the Darlington Speedway

William Byron shattered the record for consecutive laps led from the start at Darlington, surpassing Bill Elliott’s 1988 mark of 107 laps after leading for over 243 laps. As such, losing the race from such a big vantage point further salted Byron’s wounds of not winning in Darlington. The No. 24 driver was aware of the mistakes committed by his team that cost him the victory against Hamlin.

William Byron
William Byron (Via IMAGO)

Still, Byron remained optimistic over the situation and did not blame Hendrick Motorsports for sabotaging his race. The 27-year-old acknowledged that the situation ‘sucked’ for him. He pointed out that it stung him to lose the race after being so close to winning. Regardless, William Byron showcased positivity and explained that he was proud of the team effort. Almost achieving the win proved that the team was capable of winning and just needed to fine-tune their efforts.

It sucks, It’ll sting to be this close, but at the same time, it’s like, man, really proud of that effort by our whole team. It shows what we’re made of and, hopefully, a lot more of that to come.

William Byron told NASCAR.com.

Despite the disappointing situation at the Cook Out Southern 500, William Byron gave it his all in Bristol and achieved a P6 finish. Now, the 27-year-old will start preparing for Talladega as Hendrick Motorsports strives to learn from its previous mistakes. Only time will tell about how the team enables Byron to score impressive results against the rivals and bolster his position in the Cup Series championship. The pace at Darlington proved that the No. 24 driver possessed the speed required to compete for the win at the forefront.

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