William Byron earned victory in Sunday’s Food City Showdown presented by M&M’s for the eNASCAR iRacing Pro invitational Series at virtual Bristol Motor Speedway.
For the second week in a row, the driver of the No. 24 Axalta Chevrolet dominated in the virtual racing series that is following the NASCAR Cup Series schedule that has been paused due the COVID-19 pandemic.
Byron was able to pull away from John Hunter Nemechek and Matt DiBenedetto during a restart with four laps to go and drive away with the win after leading 116 laps in the race.
“It was a lot of fun,” Byron told FOX Sports following the race. “We had to work through some track position and really keep ourselves up toward the top five. This one of the racetracks I always enjoy coming to in the Cup car. … It’s fun to have a little bit of pressure on a race in iRacing.”
Byron, who lost last weekend in the virtual race at Texas Motor Speedway after a bump-and-run move late by Timmy Hill, said winning the following weekend made the victory a little sweeter.
“I mean, obviously when the race is going, I think anybody would be dumb to tell you that they don’t take it seriously because it’s a race, but it took me probably an hour after the race to really cool off and realize that I was just racing on the computer and I could get over it,” Byron said.
“For me mentally, I try to treat it as a race when the race is going on. But I think that it was just frustrating because we hadn’t closed one out yet and we had led the most laps, so to finally close the deal this week was really awesome.”
Nemechek finished second, the same place he started, while Hill, last Sunday’s winner at Texas, finished third. Homestead-Miami Speedway winner Denny Hamlin earned a fourth-place result, while DiBenedetto rounded out the top five.
