William Byron beat Ryan Blaney in an 11-lap dash and won the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway, putting him in the field with teammate Kyle Larson for next weekend’s championship race after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 finale in Martinsville, Va.
With Blaney leading and the pair charging to the historic short track’s first turn, Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet clipped Blaney’s No. 12 Ford to send it up the track and give him track position.
Byron won a race off pit road following the 10th caution with 18 laps to go and held off Blaney by 0.717 seconds for his third win this season and third at Martinsville.
More importantly, the Hendrick Motorsports driver, who started outside the cutline in fifth, led a career-high 304 laps to put himself into the Championship 4 for the third straight season, joining Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and Larson.
Larson advanced over Christopher Bell by seven points.
Chase Elliott, Ross Chastain and Larson rounded out the top five at Martinsville.
The failure of Blaney and Team Penske teammate Joey Logano to advance ended the organization’s three-year winning streak and kept Ford from winning a title.
Polesitter Byron showed the way around the half-mile flat track over the first 70 laps ahead of teammates Larson and Elliott, but Blaney was the biggest mover as he went from his 31st starting spot to 16th.
By Lap 108, Blaney maneuvered into the top 10, but Byron held the point and claimed Stage 1 after 130 laps.
Following Carson Hocevar’s caution-producing spin on Lap 217, Byron restarted with the lead with about 35 laps to go and endured single-car incidents by Cole Custer and Cody Ware late in Stage 2 as the hard-charging Blaney made it to second.
Bell and Larson, who started the race by gridding third and fourth in the standings, respectively, raced each other hard as Byron drove off to win Stage 2.
In a 40-lap span, Briscoe and Hamlin both had their Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota engines expire, putting pressure on the reliability of Bell’s Camry, which was running fourth and trying to outpoint Larson’s Chevy.
A sequence of green-flag pit stops occurred just before Erik Jones spun between Turns 3 and 4 for the eighth caution.
