Byron Remains Red Hot, Wins at Iowa

By Justin Tucker

You would be hard pressed to find a driver with more momentum across NASCAR’s top three series than William Byron.

The 18 year old recent high school graduate came into Saturday night’s Speediatrics 200 at Iowa Speedway riding the wave of last weekend’s win at Texas and two wins in his eight career Truck Series starts.

Byron showed no signs of slowing down leading a race high 107 of 200 laps to score his third win in his last nine truck races after holding off Cole Custer on a late race restart.

“My gosh. It’s awesome just to be a part of Kyle Busch Motorsports and to have the group of guys I do,” Byron said from Victory Lane. “It’s amazing. I’m so fortunate to be in this position.

“We had a couple setbacks there. I stalled it on pit road and I had a few setbacks on some restarts, but we kept after it until that last restart. It’s awesome.”

Custer had his best run of the season on Saturday night finding himself in position to get his first win of the season and secure his spot in the Truck Series chase. However Byron was too strong forcing Custer to settle for second.

“For the first 10 laps or so, the others were probably better than us on four tires. After that it kind of equaled out,” said Custer, who led a race for the first time this season (three laps). “I thought I had them there when I took the lead.

“I can’t thank Marcus (Richmond, crew chief) and everyone enough. They worked their tails off all weekend. I really appreciate that. I think we’re going in the right direction.”

Cameron Hayley would finish third followed by: Ben Rhodes and Tyler Reddick rounding out the top five.

Daniel Suarez, Ben Kennedy, Matt Crafton, Christopher Bell, and Johnny Sauter would round out the top ten finishers on Saturday.