William Byron wins NASCAR’S Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway

HAMPTON — With nine laps to go, William Byron snagged the lead from Bubba Wallace and then held on to win the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 NASCAR Cup Series race at the newly configured and repaved Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“It was so different,” Byron said moments after winning the race. “Honestly the last few laps I was just trying to manage the gap to Bubba…thanks to this whole team. They’ve done a great job this year.”

Byron led the most laps with 111 in a race that featured a track record 20 race leaders and 46 lead changes.

It was Byron’s first win this year and third career win.

“Lots of changes with the Next Gen car but the Liberty University Chevrolet was awesome there,” Byron said. “We worked hard over night. We had a pretty tough practice (Saturday), worked hard on it, got it to handle well…and it’s a little intermediate style with some superspeedway to it. It’s super exciting.”

Crew chief Rudy Fugle said the team worked late Saturday night and then came in early Sunday morning to basically rebuild the car.

“Today was awesome; we led a bunch of laps,” Byson said. “I felt like we had the best car with how we could move through the field. It’s awesome to win in the inaugural race of Atlanta in this style so it’s always cool to do something like that.”

As Byron crossed the finish line to win the race, Justin Haley, Wallace and Chris Buescher wrecked behind him while Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe went into the wall a little before that.

Christopher Bell crossed the finish line in second but NASCAR ruled that he passed below the line.

Because of the penalty, Bell was relegated to 23rd place and Ross Chastain, who originally finished third, was bumped up to second.

It was an unlikely runner-up finish for Chastain, who overcame a wreck and a penalty to battle back into the top five.

At lap 95, Chastain was in the lead but went into the wall in turn 1 after a blown tire and then was penalized two laps for improper fueling.

“Slammed the wall…I thought our day was over,” Chastain said of the flat tire but added that his crew was able to fix the car to where he could drive it. “We were fast, so fast…to come back second is incredible. I think we did everything right.”

Chastain led 42 laps.

Kurt Busch was third, Daniel Suarez fourth, and Corey LaJoie fifth.

Rounding out the top 10 were Chase Elliott (who led 29 laps), Buescher, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, and Alex Bowman.

Wallace, who was challenging Byron during the last few laps, finished 13th.

There were 11 cautions for 65 laps and out of 37 cars, only 25 finished the race.

The biggest wreck came at lap 145 when Tyler Reddick lost a tire off turn 4. A total of 13 cars were involved but all 13 were able to get back in the race without losing a lap.

Byron won stage 1 followed by Denny Hamlin, Daniel Suarez, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Kurt Busch.

Blaney won stage 2, followed by Elliott, Briscoe, Aric Almirola and Brad Keselowski.