Motorsports
NASCAR Cup: William Byron regular-season champ
By AMANDA VINCENT
The NASCAR Cup Series closed out its regular season Aug. 24 with the running of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. William Byron, then, officially was crowned 2025 Cup Series regular-season champion as the series points leader with a 55-point lead over second-place Ryan Blaney.
Byron actually clinched the regular-season title a week earlier with a 12th-place finish at Richmond (Va.) Raceway on Aug. 16.
“It’s really the best 12th-place finish I’ve ever had,” Byron said after the Richmond race.
Byron achieved 17 playoff points from two race wins and seven stage wins. With 15 additional playoff points that go along with the regular-season title, Byron carries a total of 32 playoff points into the playoffs, matching the 32 playoff point-tally of his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Kyle Larson. After the points reset, Larson and Byron are tied atop the standings with 2032 points apiece.
“I think our strength is just that we’re fast at all the different tracks,” Byron said during Playoff Media Day on Wednesday. “I really don’t see a track that we’re at a big deficit. So I think at the same time, though, you never know what everyone else is going to bring and how fast they’re going to be. So we’ve just got to keep working. We can keep getting better, but that’s our strength.”
Byron kicked off the 2025 season with a win in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February. His second win of the year came near the end of the 26-race regular season — in race 23 of the year at Iowa Speedway. Byron’s season, so far, also includes nine top-fives and 13 top-10 finishes.