William Byron Branded Himself “an Idiot” Over Chicago Practice Wreck

Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron came into the 2025 Chicago Street race with the hopes of redemption and securing his second win of the year. He is currently going through a tough streak, with three of his last four finishes being outside the top-25, with P9 at Mexico being his bets race. The bad luck seems to be following him this week as well at the street race.

The No:24 Chevy driver was involved in an avoidable wreck in the practice session on Friday. After running eight laps, in which he was faster than pole sitter Shane van Gisbergen, William Byron lost control of his car entering turn one. The car slid out, hit the barrier, and the left-rear toe-link was significantly damaged, forcing them to sit out of the rest of the session.

This was devastating for the team and the driver, as the incident killed the momentum on their side in preparation for the main event. This distraught feeling made William Byron call himself as an idiot, on his post-race interview, and asserted that the incident coming just few times after he pitted for new tires made it more disappointing for him.

I’m an idiot. I just took a lot through there and (had) a lot of speed. I was just getting my tires cleaned back off from leaving pit road. I had just pitted, so my tires were probably just coming up to temp again.

William Byron told TNT Sports (Motorsports.com).

Further talking about the point, he explained what went wrong and explained that he just started pushing again after getting enough temp on the tires, before when things went south. He then admitted that it’s really bad that he crashed out and his team was forced work more on the cars, putting them behind the initial schedule.

I took it easy the first half of the lap and I was starting to push, being close to the alternate start/finish (line) and just lost traction… Just s**ks starting from the back … just don’t like crashing.

William Byron added.

William Byron and teammates had a nightmare qualifying

The momentum killing incident and bad luck followed him to the qualifying session, and not just him, his all four Hendrick Motorsports teammates also suffered. All of them will start the race at the rear, after being forced abandoned their starting position.

William Byron’s crew started fixing the primary car and that forced them to start back of the grid. Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott’s Chevy’s also crashed in the practice, resulting in them also being forced to make the same decision as Byron.

2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson was the only driver to survive the practice session chaos, but his luck ran out there. The No:5 Chavey was involved in an incident in the qualifying and was forced to abandon his P14 starting position, to fix the car.

The team came into the weekend with the confident boost from Chase Elliott’s win last week at Atlanta, that ended the HMS winless streak started in race week 13.  But it’s not the end for the Chevy giants as all four of their drivers are strong in road courses.

All of them are proven road course winners, and starting behind the pack for the main event on Sunday will give them extra motivation to pull off a strong run. They want to be along though in this pursuit as JGR’s Denny Hamlin and 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace are also starting behind due to car issues and wrecks, with similar goals. They will be hoping to finish the day with at least a top 10 run.  

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