Only three racers have 3 wins heading into the 2024 Grant Park 165 Chicago Street Race. Within that esteemed trifecta, Kyle Larson & Denny Hamlin, are making waves almost every week battling for the lead, spurring talks of a resurgent ‘rivalry.’ But why has William Byron’s equally resurgent #24 camp been often overlooked?

As it would appear, Byron has been winless from April when alongside teammates Larson and Chase Elliott, he gifted Rick Hendrick a perfect 1-2-3 sweep on Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary celebrations. Since then, it hasn’t completely been dark clouds for William Byron’s playoff aspirations, yet, some would deem his recent form unusual compared to his thunderous early promises.

After all, the ‘Next Gen’ car’s winningest driver had three wins in the first eight races of the 2024 Cup Series season. And now, before a potential 12-race winless streak in Chicago, Bob Pockrass asked Byron if he’s fallen into somewhat of a mid-season “slump” lately.

A mid-season “slump” before the playoffs

Before Willy B’s redemption spin on the streets of Chicago, he faced qualifying troubles in the form of a power steering failure. As a result, NASCAR mandated that the #24 car start from the rear, and when the green flag waves Byron will roll off the grid in P27 alongside Noah Gragson in Row 14. Those are only the most recent of Byron’s flaws, as even Pockrass noted on his X/Twitter post of the interview which held Byron’s definitive refusal of negative claims directed towards his recent regression. The FOX journalist perfectly justified his initial inquiry about a “slump” when he captioned the video, “The three-time 2024 winner says no despite one top-10 finish in his last five starts.”

To elaborate, Byron told Pockrass, “No, I mean, certainly, I wanna have better results. But if you look at our qualifying efforts. I mean, It’s not a slump. We’ve been in the top 8 I think the last few weeks. Yeah, Charlotte was really good. That was just a little over a month ago.”

Accordingly, Byron opined on his contrary perspective, “We just gotta put the whole weekend together. We haven’t on the results sheet, it doesn’t look good cause the last two weeks we haven’t put the results together. But You know, Three weeks ago at Iowa we finished in second battling for the win. So it’s just the way this sport goes, everyone just kind of up and down. You just hope that you can start to put together some consistent results when you get closer to the playoffs.”