The NASCAR Cup Series is one of the most competitive series anywhere in the world. Every single driver only has one goal: winning the championship. Things get so competitive towards the end of the season that it gives birth to tension among teammates, especially when it’s one of the more competitive teams like Hendrick Motorsports. Therefore, teammates need to know when to separate the personal from the professional. William Byron recently revealed how that is achieved in HMS.

Hendrick Motorsports is considered by many to be the greatest team to have ever been part of the Cup Series. Any driver who gets the chance to drive full-time with Rick Hendrick’s organization knows that they have a shot at the title every single season. So it’s not uncommon for there to be a lot of competition between them in the latter stages of the competition.

William Byron reveals the difficulty of Hendrick Motorsports’ team activity

The NFL is among the most popular sports in the country today, and fantasy football has blown up in the past decade or so. It’s quite common for NFL fans to play fantasy football, and the same is true for Hendrick Motorsports drivers. William Byron recently revealed that it is fantasy football that is one of the things that keeps the on-track rivalry away from their personal lives.

“We definitely bond over it. It’s a team sport, and you just have to keep a tight-knit group to get through 36 weekends a year. So we started a couple of years ago doing the Fantasy Football League, and I was talking a lot of trash before the season started, so I had a lot of fun with it. A lot of our guys had a lot of knowledge about football, so it’s nice to go up against them,” the driver of the #24 said.

Being a race car driver and maintaining a proper fantasy football lineup can get challenging. The fact that the races and a lot of the football games take place on Sunday makes it tough but William Byron welcomes the challenge. As per the 26-year-old, the best time to set one’s team on a Sunday is in the morning before reaching the track and getting into that mindset of racing a few hours later.

“And the interesting thing is just the trades and everything and trying to manage the waiver wire throughout the season because we race on Sundays. So it’s difficult to set your lineup, going into Sunday you have to make sure you do it first thing in the morning,” the 26-year-old added.

Read More – “It’s Access Like Never Seen Before”: Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, & Ryan Blaney Unfurl Jan’s Expectations from Netflix’s Nascar: Full Speed

However, that does not mean that there are no conversations about fantasy football when one is on the race track. William Byron also revealed when he and his teammates get the time to talk about their respective fantasy lineups on race day and it’s usually only a couple of hours before the green flag.

Hendrick Motorsports star reveals pre-race football rituals at team

Trending

Richard ‘The King’ Petty Comes Clean on Legacy MC’s Cup Struggles With Heartbreaking Admission

Joe Gibbs’ Star Ran Out of Talent, Claims Bubba Wallace Insider After Successive Kansas Fumbles

“I’m Not Doing It”- Denny Hamlin Confesses the Only Condition That Would Bring Carl Edwards Back to NASCAR

“It Terrifies Me”: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Confesses an Unexpected Fear of His Iconic NASCAR Trophies

Denny Hamlin’s Fiancée & NASCAR World Shower Blessings as Bubba Wallace Embraces Fatherhood With Son’s Birth

Fantasy football is a sport where outside opinion can help a player quite a lot. The Hendrick Motorsports drivers are no different in this regard. As per William Byron, on every race day after the pre-race meeting, everyone would get together and talk about their fantasy lineups. It could be a good way to calm those pre-race nerves a bit. 

“So once we’re out there, it’s all on the track but I will say we have a pre-race meeting around 12, 12:30, usually our race starts at 3:00 Eastern, and typically, once our meeting gets done, we’ll have some conversations about how our fantasy’s going and usually I get to see the first quarter of most of the 1:00 games and so I can kind of look at how my players are doing there. And once they get back to the bus after the race is over, that’s usually one of the first things I do is check and see how my fantasy football did,” Byron said.

Watch This Story: Kyle Busch Brings In Another Sponsor for Richard Childress Racing

Some might say that it takes the focus away from the racing aspect of things, but it may be a good thing for the drivers. As far as Hendrick Motorsports drivers are concerned, the race results speak for themselves. So one can say that fantasy football is part of what keeps the camaraderie up at Hendrick Motorsports.