William Byron can add to North Carolina legacy with Cup championship

William Byron on possibly being the first driver from North Carolina to win the title since 1999 William Byron on learning racing skills through iRacing

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

William Byron grew up in the heart of NASCAR country. Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In a sport with roots in the moonshiners of the Southeast, Byron has a chance Sunday to add to the North Carolina legacy in the sport.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver will vie for the NASCAR Cup Series title against Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell.

If he wins, he’ll become the first driver with North Carolina roots to become the champion since … 1999. Virtually all teams base operations in North Carolina, but that hasn’t created a steady stream of race-car drivers to reach the Cup level.

As the sport grew, drivers from across the nation have muscled their way into NASCAR stardom. Dale Jarrett, from Hickory (N.C.), was the last driver from the state that houses most of the NASCAR teams.

In addition to Byron, Blaney also has some North Carolina roots as he grew up primarily in High Point, but he is quick to point out that he was born in Ohio.

Byron, a Charlottean through and through, seemed surprised to hear that he could earn the first title for a Tarheel State driver in 24 years.

“I haven’t thought about that, but it’d be cool,” Byron said. “It’s different that I’m from Charlotte. Everyone else moves here basically or lives in [nearby] Mooresville. So it’s cool that I’m kind of a native to Charlotte.”

William Byron on possibly being the first driver from North Carolina to win the title since 1999

Even though Byron was born in Charlotte and he comes from NASCAR country, his family doesn’t have deep roots in the sport.

“He definitely has a lot of passion for racing and experience of wanting to be a race-car driver, even though he wasn’t necessarily working on a car or had a garage out back where somebody was racing all the time,” said his crew chief Rudy Fugle.

Byron’s primary driving education came online before he started getting to race vehicles. Team owner Rick Hendrick heard about Byron when he started racing as a teenager through a neighbor who would tell Hendrick about Byron going to an academically strong private high school, racing and being active in other activities.

“I don’t think where you’re from makes any difference,” Hendrick said. “Where you live now is what counts. … William’s age, his story, really would be a big story if you take a kid that didn’t grow up in the sport, that had no connections in the sport, that was able to go to college and do all the things he has done, learning how to race on a computer, I think that is kind of like when Jeff Gordon came on the scene and opened the door for a lot of open-wheel guys.”

In some ways, Hendrick said, Byron’s path shows that there is no need to be from the Southeast.

“I think what this can do for a lot of kids that are from anywhere in the country, in the world, that racing on a computer, there’s opportunity if you get in the right spot,” Hendrick said.

“William is a great example for a lot of kids, young people, that have a dream of racing in this sport, seeing that you can put those tools to work and accomplish something pretty spectacular.”

Just because Byron didn’t grow up wanting to sit in a garage and tinker on cars doesn’t make him any less into the sport. All those hours racing online and then a schedule of late models and short-track racing make him as much of a gearhead as many of his competitors.

He isn’t going to have the deep, deep knowledge of every shock and spring. But he actually has been running more late models and short-track races recently to hone his craft and almost make up for what he missed if he had started racing in grade school like many of his competitors.

William Byron on learning racing skills through iRacing

“I don’t want to classify him as a city boy, but he is from in Charlotte,” said Fugle, who is from upstate New York. “I wasn’t sure how much of a race fan and/or racing history he knew.

“And, really, from his era, he knows a ton. He knows about when the cars had big power and big downforce and when the cars what he thought were the most competitive or fun to watch and the drivers and the sponsors of that era and all that. Just the placement from being in the hub of racing rubbed off on him more than I would have initially thought of when I first met him.”

Fugle himself is a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He had started his engineering education at the Rochester Institute of Technology near his New York home but then transferred to a school that he knew would allow him to get practical NASCAR experience while also pursuing his education.

“I just realized (RIT) wasn’t really for me — it wasn’t as much into the racing or the car side as I wanted to be,” Fugle said. “It was more general engineering. I wasn’t getting the experience I wanted to have.

“I’d been in the Charlotte area for races many times, I’d seen the campus and I thought that that would be more of a closer experience to go work on race cars and, and kind of dual engineer and work on racecars at the same time, which is ultimately what I did.”

Now the city boy and New York engineer have combined to be a force in NASCAR’s top division at one of the sport’s most iconic teams. Byron was a fan of Hendrick Motorsports as he rooted for an HMS driver as a kid. It wasn’t the one from North Carolina (Dale Earnhardt Jr). It was the one from California — seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.

“I just liked Jimmie’s approach and his attitude and obviously, how much success they had over the years, and it just didn’t seem like anything could bother him,” Byron said. “He was bulletproof in that sense of just being able to execute races and execute under pressure, and that’s what I liked about him.”

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Now he has a chance to win a championship for the same organization as Johnson.

“When I looked at him, watched him, remember what he did at JRM [JR Motorsports], how confident he was when he walked up to me one day when he was 15, said, ‘I’m going to drive for you one day,’ he just had the whole package,” Hendrick said.

“You put him in the right spot, give him time, he’s going to develop into something special because he’s a special guy.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.