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Dr. Diandra: The Championship Contenders Part 2: William Byron and Kyle Larson

Which Cup title contender has Phoenix advantage?
Dave Burns, Kyle Petty, and Dale Jarrett highlight the top storylines and make their picks for championship weekend, where Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell, and William Byron will race for the Cup Series title.

As I mentioned in Part 1, it’s virtually impossible to predict a winner when a championship depends on a single race. Instead of making predictions, I summarize each driver’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and leave it to you to decide who you think has the best shot at becoming the 2023 Cup Series champion.

Part 1 of this series covered Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell. Here, I’ll provide data about Kyle Larson and William Byron. Although both men drive for Hendrick Motorsports, it is hard to find two drivers with more disparate origin stories. In a closely matched Championship 4, these two drivers are the closest to favorites.

William Byron

North Carolina native Byron got his start on iRacing. He didn’t race physical cars until he was 14, which is old compared to most drivers of his generation. The 2023 season has been Byron’s best so far. He earned six of his 10 career wins this year. He’ll turn 26 at the end of this month, making him the youngest driver in the Championship 4.

Strength: The best numbers of any driver. Byron has the most Cup Series wins this year with six. He ties with Larson and Denny Hamlin for the most top-five finishes with 14 and has the most top-10 finishes with 20. His 11.2 season average finishing position is the best of any driver. That’s despite his season including a greenhouse penalty that cost him 60 points and five playoff points.

Strength: Phoenix. Byron has an 8.3 average finish at Phoenix in the Next Gen car. He won the spring race at Phoenix and earned 19 stage points. While stage points don’t matter in the championship race, they’re only awarded to drivers who run up front.

Weakness: Slowdown in the playoffs. After winning five races in the regular season, Byron won only one playoff race and led just 44 laps in the last nine races. He earned enough points to make the Championship 4 without a win in the final round, but winning is paramount in Phoenix.

Opportunity: Untapped reserves. Byron is a low-key driver. He flew commercial to Phoenix — in a middle seat — because he didn’t want to ask any other drivers if they had an empty seat on their jets. With this competitive a field, he will need everything he can muster. Crew chief Rudy Fugle won multiple championships in the Truck Series. He knows what it takes to win and has a good enough relationship with Byron to do it.

Threat: Divided Efforts. Hendrick Motorsports is used to having multiple drivers in the Championship 4. They arguably have the deepest bench of any team; however, neither Byron nor Larson gets 100% of HMS’s resources.

Kyle Larson

California’s Larson is the 2021 Cup Series champion and the only competitor to have won a championship before. He started racing in karts at age seven. Now 31 years old, Larson is the oldest driver in the Championship 4. He’s also the most experienced, with 330 races under his belt and 23 wins. He also has 103 top-five finishes and 163 top-10 finishes.

I’ve started each of the prior summaries with strengths, but I begin here with Larson’s primary weakness because understanding it is critical to appreciating his strengths.

Weakness: Finishing Races. Larson has eight DNFs in 35 races this year, which is a 22.8% DNF rate. Larson’s number of DNFs is second only to Austin Dillon, who has 10. Some of Larson’s DNFs are headscratchers, like running into the pit-road sand barriers at Homestead. Others are simply bad luck. His Championship 4 contenders each have three DNFs. Larson can’t win the championship if he doesn’t finish the race.

Strength: He’s Kyle Larson. There’s no other way to put it. Larson will go down as one of the great motorsport drivers — and not just in NASCAR. This year, he’s led more laps than anyone else in the Cup Series (1127 laps) while running fewer total laps. His 13.1% rate of leading relative to all laps he’s run is best in the series. Only Hamlin, Byron and Martin Truex Jr. have laps-led percentages above 10%. After that, it drops to Christopher Bell’s 6.8%.

Strength: Phoenix. Aside from an engine failure in spring 2022, Larson has a ninth-place and a fourth-place finish in the Next Gen car. And, of course, he won Phoenix in 2021. Larson sat on the pole in the spring race, which is a huge advantage there. Additionally, the No. 5 team knew they were in the Championship 4 three weeks ago: They’ve had the longest to prepare for Phoenix while other drivers had to focus on Homestead and Martinsville.

Opportunity: Practice. Larson is a seat-of-the-pants driver who doesn’t trust simulators. He’s very good at explaining what his car needs and trusting crew chief Cliff Daniels to make it so. That skill isn’t must use in the now-standard 20-minute practices, but drivers had 50 minutes of practice Friday evening. The additional time is especially important given that Goodyear brought a tire new to Phoenix, which provides more grip and more wear.

Threat: Divided Efforts. Larson has the same issue as Byron: Bell and Blaney have been their owners’ sole foci for Phoenix. HMS has had to prepare two teams with very different operation styles.

Find out who takes home the trophy Sunday with coverage starting at 2 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.