William Byron hoping to repeat last season's NASCAR Cup Series win at Iowa Speedway

NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — William Byron said there can be a good feeling when he returns to a track where he has won recently.

Whether that changes his fortunes of this season remains to be seen.

Byron is back at Iowa Speedway, where he won last year’s NASCAR Cup Series race. He has only won once since then, and doesn’t have a win this season.

“I wouldn’t say that you come in here like, ‘Oh man, this is going to go so great because of last year,’” Byron said. “But yeah, maybe you just drive in feeling a little better about the place.”

Byron, who will start 19th in Sunday's 350-lap race, comes in ranked 12th in the season standings with 568 points. He has four top-five finishes and nine top-10s.

Byron’s win last season came after he opened the year by winning the Daytona 500, then he didn’t win again until Iowa, a span of 21 races. He is now in a stretch of 22 races without a victory, dating to his win at Martinsville in the next-to-last race of last season..

Byron paused when asked to describe this season.

“I don’t know,” Byron said. “I mean, it’s just kind of under how we would want to perform. But I think the new car has been a learning curve, and we’re just trying to get a hold of it. We’re just trying to get it all figured out and get better.”

Byron won last season’s race with fuel strategy, stretching his final tank of gas to lead the final 74 laps.

“It just worked out for us that it was fuel mileage and we had a pretty good car,” Byron said.

Byron has three wins overall at Iowa Speedway — he won an O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race in 2017 and a Truck Series race in 2016. He finished second in the inaugural Cup Series race in Iowa in 2024.

“I don’t know, but it sure seems like it’s been a good track for us over the years,” Byron said.

Points leader Denny Hamlin hasn't had the best of luck at Iowa Speedway — he has finished 24th in each of the first two races.

Those struggles continued during Saturday's practice and qualifying, when he dealt with brake issues. Hamlin ran just 24 practice laps, then was 29th in afternoon qualifying.

Hamlin and Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe both had brake issues.

“The first five laps, I went out and everything was checking out,” Hamlin said. “Everything was okay. I thought the car had decent speed and had a good balance to it. Certainly better than what we’ve been here in the past, and but unfortunately just didn’t get more practice in that.”

Iowa Speedway will undergo a complete repaving before next season’s race, and it’s something that drivers think is long overdue.

“Part of you as a racer is like, man, why would you repave somewhere?” Ryan Preece said. “But you can see the separation in some of the lanes, and it definitely is going to need it.”

The project at the .875-mile track is scheduled to begin next week and the plan is for it to be finished by late fall. Next season’s race is scheduled for July 4.

Parts of the track were repaved before the inaugural race in 2024, with the new surface in the bottom groove of the turns.

“I just hope they really bank up the third and fourth lane because then I think it’s going to be a heck of a race track where it’s not locked on the bottom with new pavements,” said Ryan Blaney, who won the 2024 race. “So time will tell.”

A new stage break procedure will begin with Sunday’s race.

If a caution flag is waved with 10 or fewer laps remaining in the stage, the stage will be considered complete, and the caution period will be the scheduled stage break. The leader of the race will receive the green-and-white checkered flag, along with the yellow flag, when the field returns to the start/finish line. The move is to cut the time drivers are under a yellow flag at the end of the stage.

“If a caution does come out four or five laps before the stage is over, and you know you’re not going to restart it right around there for double the time, that’s no fun for anybody,” Blaney said. “That’s no fun for anybody watching. It’s not fun for us either, sitting around there cruising around for extra laps and taking time up.”

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing