It was a big night for William Byron.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver won his way into the NASCAR Playoffs round of 8 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday with his team’s record-extending 300th victory.
Byron took the lead following the last restart with six laps to go and drove away from the field as Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace finished behind him.
Pole winner Wallace was having one of the best races of his career, leading 111 laps on the night.
He led the field to a restart with 20 laps left and was side-by-side with Stage 2 winner Kyle Larson, who’d also led over 90 laps on the night, when Larson lost control and ended his race with a trip into the wall.
NASCAR IS MAKING A BIG CHANGE TO THE PLAYOFFS
Wallace remained in command on the restart, but a multi-car crash brought out another yellow with 12 laps left, which opened the door for Byron to make his move from fourth and grab his sixth win of the season.
Byron heads into next Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway as the points leader, while Wallace drops below the cutline with Tyler Reddick, Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch, all of whom were involved in crashes at Texas.
Here are the full standings after Texas:
William Byron
Denny Hamlin
Chris Buescher
Christopher Bell
Martin Truex Jr.
Ross Chastain
Brad Keselowski
Kyle Larson
Bubba Wallace
Tyler Reddick
Ryan Blaney
Kyle Busch