A pair of nines were running wild on Saturday night as William Byron outlasted Chase Elliott to win the Super Late Model Portion of the CARS Tour Catawba Valley 250 at Hickory Motor Speedway.
For Byron, the victory was his first in a Super Late Model with crew chief Jeff Fultz. Byron is also the current championship leader in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East division. Elliott started 11th and simply ran out of time in trying to catch Byron who started fourth.
The race ended with a 92 lap green flag run.
Byron first took the lead on a Lap 21 restart, beating pole-sitter Stephen Leicht into Turn 3 off a fierce side-by-side reset. Perhaps most impressive is that Byron completed the pass on the outside — no easy feat at the storied .363-mile bullring.
“I just want to thank LFR chasis,” Byron said in Victory Lane after winning in his first start for his new Super Late Model team. “I’ve got to thank my parents and my crew — everyone who makes this happen. These (Supers) have a lot more throttle than what I’m used to and it presents a challenge. Also thanks to Josh Berry at JR Motorsports for all the advice he’s given me.”
Byron has previously ran Super Late races out of the JR Motorsports stable and was naturally very familiar with Elliott, understanding what it meant to beat the defending XFINITY Series champion in a Late Model race.
“That was awesome,” Byron said. “He’s really good. All the talent in the world and good people behind him. I’ve got good people too and I’m proud of their effort. Great team effort.”
As for Elliott, running this race was just a way to escape the pressure of NASCAR. Having a good result was just gravy.
“It’s hard to pass and track gets slick, hot and racey but that’s short track racing,” Elliott said. “So this is definitely fun for me. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t having fun, that’s for sure.”
The race had a relatively low amount of attrition and most of the damage occurred early on lap 21 when Matthew Bragg appeared to stack up in front of the field and got turned around. Quinn Houff and Grant Galloway joined Bragg with a bulk of the damage while Clay Rogers and David Garbo also received a little bit of damage.
- William Byron
- Chase Elliott
- Kyle Grissom
- Cole Timm
- Preston Peltier
- Daniel Hemric
- Anderson Bowen
- Zane Smith
- Tyler Church
- Dominique Van Wieringen
- Branton Setzer
- Steve Wallace
- Chris Davidson
- AJ Frank
- Stephen Nasse
- Kaz Grala
- Grant Galloway
- Brandon Lynn
- Casey Roderick
- Lucas Jones
- Clay Rogers
- Clay Jones
- David Garbo, Jr.
- Quin Houff
- DJ VanderLey
- Gus Dean
- Stephen Leicht
- Chris Fontaine
- Robby Lyons
- Matthew Wragg
- Lucas Ransone
