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William Byron‘s win at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday did more than save his season. It kept him from becoming the fourth straight regular-season champion to go winless the next year.
Byron won the 2025 regular-season title. Before him, the last three regular-season champions all went winless the following season.
A dominant day
Byron swept both stages and led 362 of the 500 laps in the Xfinity 500, beating Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott by 2.049 seconds. It was his first win of 2026 and his first since he won the same race last fall.
The trend
Chase Elliott won the 2022 regular-season title, the first year of the Next Gen car, and won five races that year. In 2023, he missed seven races, six with a broken leg and one for a suspension after he wrecked Denny Hamlin in the Coca-Cola 600, and went winless.
Martin Truex Jr. won the 2023 regular-season title and three races that year. He went winless in 2024, his final full-time season.
Tyler Reddick won the 2024 regular-season title and three races, and made his first Championship 4. He went winless in 2025.
Byron won the 2025 regular-season title with three wins, including his second straight Daytona 500, and finished fourth among the Championship 4 drivers.
A late save
Hendrick’s only two wins in the 2026 regular season came from Elliott, and Byron went into the Martinsville race with two races left and no wins. He was eliminated from title contention after Talladega.
Byron gave Hendrick a 1-2 finish at Martinsville and helped teammate Kyle Larson, who leads the standings by 67 points going into Sunday’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Larson said after the race that with “two teammates kind of controlling the race up front,” he felt confident his rivals would not win, as Pit This Time reported.
The Cup Series finale is Sunday, November 8, at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.
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