After a tense run to the finish in which he needed to both hold Chase Briscoe at bay and save fuel to ensure he’d make it to the checkered flag, William Byron managed to find both the pace and gas he needed to win the Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway for his second win of the 2025 season. Byron’s win is his first since he earned back-to-back Daytona 500 wins in February, and it is also the 15th of his Cup career.
In order to make it to the finish after last pitting at lap 206 of 350, Byron had to go more than 140 laps on a tank of fuel based on his pit strategy, and he had to do it only one week after running out of fuel on the final lap of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. Byron was greatly aided by a rash of mid-race cautions — the yellow flag flew 12 times in total, which tied Texas in May for the most cautions in any Cup race this season — but still had to save a considerable amount of fuel in order to get to the finish line.
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After catching lapped traffic the way he needed to in the final laps, Byron was able to back off and run part-throttle enough to conserve what was in his fuel cell, which ended up being enough to hold off Briscoe, Brad Keselowski and a hard-charging Ryan Blaney by a comfortable 1.192 seconds.
“How about that for some fuel mileage?” Byron asked NBC Sports. “We’ve had our fair share of things not go our way with fuel mileage, and just super thankful for [crew chief Rudy Fugle], all these guys, all the engineers, all the engineers back at the shop, and just this whole race team. We’ve been through a lot this year, it’s been a lot of growing pains, it’s been tough on us. But it feels really good today to get a win.
“Honestly, it felt like we had a good car and just kind of raced it and tried to be there at the end, and we were. And luckily, the fuel was enough there at the end.”
Byron’s win also gives him the edge in the battle for the regular season championship, as he has now assumed the top spot in the standings with just three races to go in the regular season. Byron now has an 18-point lead over Chase Elliott in what has become a tight battle for the regular season title and the significant playoff points bonus that comes with it: The top four in the regular season standings are now separated by just 51 points, with Kyle Larson (-45) and Denny Hamlin (-51) still very much in the conversation.
Ryan Preece would round out the top five behind Briscoe, Keselowski and Blaney, which made for a considerable development in the battle for the final available spot in the NASCAR playoffs. After entering Sunday 42 points behind RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher for the final playoff spot, Preece is now just 23 points below the playoff line, cutting his deficit nearly in half thanks to his third top five of the season and a 22nd place finish for Buescher.
Brickyard 400 champion Bubba Wallace finished sixth after going from laps down with toe link damage to tearing all the way from 32nd through the field on the final run. Alex Bowman, Carson Hocevar, Joey Logano and Austin Dillon rounded out the top 10.
Iowa Corn 350 results
- #24 – William Byron
- #19 – Chase Briscoe
- #6 – Brad Keselowski
- #12 – Ryan Blaney
- #60 – Ryan Preece
- #23 – Bubba Wallace
- #48 – Alex Bowman
- #77 – Carson Hocevar
- #22 – Joey Logano
- #3 – Austin Dillon
- #1 – Ross Chastain
- #2 – Austin Cindric
- #21 – Josh Berry
- #9 – Chase Elliott
- #42 – John Hunter Nemechek
- #43 – Erik Jones
- #20 – Christopher Bell
- #16 – A.J. Allmendinger
- #45 – Tyler Reddick
- #8 – Kyle Busch
- #54 – Ty Gibbs
- #17 – Chris Buescher
- #7 – Justin Haley
- #11 – Denny Hamlin
- #99 – Daniel Suarez
- #41 – Cole Custer
- #71 – Michael McDowell
- #5 – Kyle Larson
- #4 – Noah Gragson
- #35 – Riley Herbst (R)
- #88 – Shane van Gisbergen (R)
- #51 – Cody Ware
- #47 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- #34 – Todd Gilliland
- #10 – Ty Dillon
- #38 – Zane Smith
- #66 – Joey Gase
