“Mission accomplished”: William Byron’s crew chief makes his feelings known on a ‘huge step in the right direction’ for playoff push 

Rudy Fugle, the crew chief for William Byron's No. 24 team has declared "mission accomplished" after the team's best finish at New Hampshire in seven years. He feels the team still has work to do to match Penske and Wood Brothers Fords but that they are down the right path for the 'Magic Mile' after Sunday's results.

Byron finished third after race winner Ryan Blaney and Josh Berry. The 27-year-old's previous best finishes at the flat one-mile New Hampshire track were 11th, which he managed twice, in 2020 and 2022. The Hendrick Motorsports driver had just nine laps led in seven starts there. But this time around, he qualified fifth, led practice speed averages and also grabbed his first top-10 finish in the last six Cup races.

"Absolutely, Mission accomplished. In the five years since I've been here, we haven't done well at all, and this is the first top 10, first top five. Just a solid weekend overall. ... We've been working on that slowly at the short tracks, I think we have a better package. We still have more to chase to get those Penske and Wood Brothers cars. But for this place, it's a huge step in the right direction," Fugle said (via Racer.com).

William Byron ran inside the top-five over the first stage and finished third in each of the two stages, which averaged 4.5 running position across the 301-lap race. His average was second only to Blaney's 3.4.

The strong performance also raised the 2025 regular season champion's playoff cushion to 47 points above the cut line.

William Byron and Rudy Fougle plan to 'race free, be aggressive' in upcoming NASCAR Cup playoff races

William Byron's crew chief Rudy Fougle also believes they can race more aggressively in the upcoming Round of 12 races at Kansas and Charlotte Roval. He feels that with the points boost, they can focus on wins. The team's last win came at Iowa Speedway in August.

"To get a good start on this round, it does give us a lot of confidence and comfort to race freely. It's always a math calculation of how many points you need to get to the next round. You either win or math, and we got a really good start on it today. So, we can go race free, be aggressive, and do what we need to do to try to win the next few weeks," Fougle said.

While William Byron has never won a race at Kansas, he does have eight top-10 finishes there. He was the runner-up in the playoff race there last season. Earlier this year, Byron qualified 24th for the AdventHealth 400 and after an early flat tire caused him to fall off the lead lap, he finished the race in 24th place.

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Edited by Tushar Bahl