{"id":71751,"date":"2020-04-20T16:15:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T23:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=71751"},"modified":"2020-04-20T16:15:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T23:15:35","slug":"william-byron-wins-2nd-consecutive-enascar-iracing-pro-invitational-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/william-byron-wins-2nd-consecutive-enascar-iracing-pro-invitational-series\/","title":{"rendered":"William Byron Wins 2nd Consecutive eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image: NASCAR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

William Byron is becoming a force in the virtual racing world. Byron is now the first multi-time winner of the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, holding off driver Timmy Hill by a mere .256 seconds in overtime at the virtual Richmond Raceway on Sunday afternoon.\u00a0 Byron\u2019s first win came at iRacing\u2019s virtual Bristol Motor Speedway two weeks ago just before the Easter off-week.<\/p>\n

Byron has been a force of nature. He dominated in total laps led (319) in the four iRacing events in his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and was easily the class of the field in Sunday\u2019s Toyota Owners 150 presented by Toyota, holding the point for 94 laps in the 154-lap race.<\/p>\n

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Parker Kligerman, Landon Cassill and reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch rounded out the Richmond top five. Denny Hamlin, has a Pro Invitational Series win under his belt, finished sixth followed by his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Erik Jones. Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bubba Wallace and Brad Keselowski were some big names that rounded out the top 10 \u2014 the highest finish for both Keselowski and Wallace to date.<\/p>\n

Despite several new entries this week, the Richmond race had the real competitive feel NASCAR fans have come to expect at the .75-mile oval.<\/p>\n

And Byron, who partly got his competitive start in iRacing years ago, again put on a master class \u2013 holding off a group of competitors with fresher tires on a final race restart with three laps to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really know how that was going to work out, but luckily we were able to have a little bit of buffer to the guys with four tires, and then the late restart, just executed that well,\u2019\u2019 Byron said. \u201cIt was fun. Really enjoyed it. To go back\u2011to\u2011back is really cool. Having fun with it while we\u2019re kind of in a hiatus here, but looking forward to getting back to real racing soon, too.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Matt DiBenedetto was parked late in the race after iRacing officials disapproved of avoidable contact he made \u2013 crashing Ryan Preece in the waning laps. It was a tough ending to a promising day for Preece, who won the pole position in qualifying and held a virtual \u201cmeet and greet\u201d with his sponsors and fans before the green flag. He was the only other driver to lead multiple laps \u2013 his No. 37 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet pacing the field for 59 laps, second only to the race winner.<\/p>\n

Team Penske\u2019s Brad Keselowski, had an impressive outing who kept his No. 2 Ford among the top 10 for much of the race before a pit road miscue forced him to play catch-up again in the final laps. It was only Keselowski\u2019s 34th iRacing start compared to Byron, for example, who has more than a thousand.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, strategy played a decisive hand in the dramatic final stretch to the checkered. A caution period with four laps remaining in regulation created an urgency for Byron. He had to hold off Hill \u2013 whose No. 66 Toyota was on fresher tires \u2013 in those frantic overtime laps.<\/p>\n

And Byron and Hill have a virtual \u201chistory.\u201d Byron was leading at Texas Motor Speedway when Hill moved him on a late-race restart to snatch the victory. On Sunday, it was just a clean fair sprint to the checkered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe raced me really clean; I was really thankful for that,\u2019\u2019 Byron said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had some good races, honestly. Texas, obviously I was frustrated with Texas, but if I would have been in his position, I probably would have done the same thing, looking back on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s done a really good job showing how consistent he is. I feel like he\u2019s got good race craft, and I enjoy racing with him. I know what to expect when I race with him, that he is going to use the bumper, so I just have to race him back that way, and I think we both understand that. Fortunately, I had just enough speed to kind of keep my gap there and win that race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill, has been a very consistent finisher being the only driver with top-three finishes in all four eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series races, tweeted after the race that he was pleased with the effort, and like so many, already eagerly looking forward to the Talladega Superspeedway virtual high banks, where the series races next Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust came up a little bit short there at the end,\u2019\u2019 Hill said on Twitter. \u201cCongratulations to @WilliamByron on the win! Looking forward to a bunch of fun at Talladega next week.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Byron is becoming a force in the virtual racing world.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":71753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3424,3470,22],"tags":[7658,161,5210,127,41,7599,4271],"class_list":["post-71751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-enascar","tag-event-coverage-2","tag-iracing","tag-nascar","tag-news","tag-virtual-racing","tag-william-byron"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/eipis_byronlead_041920.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-iFh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71751"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71755,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71751\/revisions\/71755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}