Byron holds off Briscoe, escapes empty fuel tank to win Iowa Corn 350

It’s only fitting the Iowa Corn 350 Presented by Ethanol ended with a driver battling low fuel in the final 50 laps of the race.

But the strategy paid off for William Byron, who drove his No. 24 Chevrolet to victory in the 2nd NASCAR Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway on Sunday.

Byron took the lead with around 65 laps to go following the race’s 12th caution and held off an empty fuel tank in the final laps.

“We’ve been on the wrong side of that a lot,” Byron said. “To be on the other side of it, and pull away this time was awesome. (Crew chief Rudy Fogle) told me I had a lap on the switch. I was able to get a burn out in at the end before I ran out of fuel.”

Byron led pole sitter Chase Briscoe in the final 40 laps and widened his lead with 20 and 10 to go.

Brad Keselowski finished third in his No. 6 Ford, last year’s winner Ryan Blaney was fourth in his No. 12 Ford and Ryan Preece rounded out the top five in his No. 60 Ford.

“There at the end, I was running (Byron) down,” Briscoe said. “I thought I was really in the catbird seat there, and I just got there and kind of stalled out.“

I kind of experienced that when I was leading earlier. I caught the back of the field, and same thing; as soon as I got there, I just kind of died.”

Bubba Wallace, who won last week’s race to grab a spot in the playoff, led the next group of five in sixth and Alex Bowman, Carson Hocevar, Austin Dillon and Ross Chastain completed the top 10. Wallace was two laps down at one point in the race.

“I just survived. It was an up-and-down day,” Wallace said during his live post-race interview on the infield. “We had our issues, but we fought hard to get back into the top 10.”

It was Byron’s second win of the season. His other triumph came in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16.

It also completed the trifecta at Iowa Speedway. Byron has now won a NASCAR Trucks Series, Xfinity Series and Cup Series race on the 7/8-mile oval.

“It was awesome today,” Byron said. “The facility is so clean and nice and the fans were great. It’s becoming one of my favorite Cup destinations.”

The NASCAR Cup Series drivers competed at a sold-out Iowa Speedway. And it ended a tripleheader of racing that included an ARCA Menards Series race on Friday and a NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday.

All three races drew larger-than-normal crowds.

“Hendrick Motorsports loves Iowa and NASCAR loves this track,” Hendrick Motorsports President and General Manager Jeff Andrews said. “We flew in on Friday night and saw a bunch of cars leaving the track after the ARCA race. That was great to see.”

Hendrick Motorsports continues to have the top three drivers in the point standings. Byron led 141 laps on Sunday and now leads the standings with 770 points.

Chase Elliott started eighth and finished 14th. He dropped to second in the standings with 752 points.

Kyle Larson got caught up in a handful of accidents throughout the day and finished 28th. He’s third in the standings with 725 points.

“We don’t talk about it,” Byron said about two of his three teammates being directly behind him in the standings. “It’s just three extremely strong teams and (Bowman) is running well, too. We just continue to push each other and we race each other fair but hard, too. That’s helping everybody.”

Briscoe opened on the pole, but Keselowski swept the first two stages of the race for the first time in six seasons. He led 50 of those laps and was in front for 68 laps total in the race.

Briscoe started and ended strong and led 68 of the 350 laps, while Blaney and Austin Cindric led 29 and 20 laps, respectively.

Byron squeezed the final 144 laps out of his fuel cell in a track that usually has a window of 100 laps. He was 1.192 seconds in front of Briscoe.

There were seven cautions within 65 laps of the beginning of the final stage after not having a single caution in the first 190 laps. The 12 total cautions hurt Keselowski’s chances at his first win of the season.

“Just the way the yellows fell,” Keselowski said. “We had so many yellows there in Stage 3 that it got the 24 (Byron) and the 19 (Briscoe) to where they could make it on fuel pitting way outside the window, and we just couldn’t get back by them.

“We got back by a lot of guys. We restarted, I think 24th there after we pitted and got all the way back up to third, but that was as far as I could get.”

Byron claimed the 15th win of his career. He got over the hump in a fuel-mileage race after coming up short a few other times this summer. He was third last week after running out of gas at Indianapolis.

“It was tough. It was very stressful,” Fugle said. “We didn’t know until there was about eight to go that we were really close to our number. We saved a bunch from 30 to 8. All of those cautions made it hard to tell.”

Notes: The 12 cautions tied a season most in the series. … Preece’s first Xfinity win came at Iowa back in 2017. … Byron came into the weekend having finished 27th or worse in five of the past eight races. … John Hunter Nemechek made his 100th career Cup Series start and finished 15th. … Preece trimmed Roush Fenway Keselowski teammate Chris Buescher’s lead from 42 to 23 points. That battle could end up deciding the final playoff spot. … Byron, who was second at Iowa last year, said all of his success at the track may go back to his early teenage years and his experience with iRacing. “I spent a lot of time as a 13- and 14-year-old competing on iRacing on this track and Pocono and those tracks are where I’ve had the most success. I’ve turned thousands of laps at this place.” … The rest of the top five in the point standings are Hamlin (719) and Bell (684) followed by Tyler Reddick (673), Blaney (665) and Briscoe (640).