What Happened?
William Byron held off a late charge from Christopher Bell to win the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. After winning the pole, Byron put on a dominant performance to earn his second win of the season.
Byron led 42 of the 68 laps, and Chevrolet has won three of the four races at the track. Behind Byron and Bell, Ty Gibbs, Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick completed the top five.
What Really Happened?
While Byron’s fashion of victory left many unsatisfied, the race played out nearly identically to the 2023 version of the event when Reddick ended up in victory lane.
With no stage breaks last year, natural cautions last year fell roughly around the points where stages yellows split the action this season, and the racing itself followed a similar pattern as well.
In both events, Byron started out front and battled a Toyota through the race. The three-stop strategy prevailed for Reddick over Byron in 2023, and Byron’s three stops just barely beat Bell’s two stops this time around.
The early half of the final stage in both races had tremendous battles for the lead as the dominant cars fought tooth and nail, crossing over and out-braking each other, until the best car eventually got to the lead and drove away. Reddick led 41 en route to victory last year, Byron led 42 laps.
The drivers again mucked up the track in turn 8, as the track limits debate continues to grow, but they didn’t muck up the finish. Then again, they didn’t get the chance.
The lack of a late-race yellow kept the field from bunching up and acting foolish in a swarm of turn 1 dive bombs. After all, much of the discourse last year surrounded the embarrassment of the finish after such a great race.
We had a similar race with a clean finish that still had an element of drama in it. After Bell passed his teammate, the No. 20 closed dramatically on the No. 24. No, he didn’t have a chance to use the bumper or make a late dive like we saw in the Xfinity race, but a clean, natural finish feels preferable to the ugly, chaotic one from the year before.
Looking further, this race seemed preferable to most of the road course action from the previous season. Even with the stage yellows, we still saw multiple…
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