NASCAR champion admits 'losing his mind' in Richmond chaos

The NASCAR playoffs may not have begun for 2025 yet, but the series got a new champion on Saturday night.

William Byron took the regular season championship with 12th place at Richmond, after rival Chase Elliott was wrecked by Kyle Busch around the halfway point of the race.

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That wreck, combined with Byron's points haul from the night, made it impossible for Elliott or any other driver to pass him in the standings after a chaotic race which saw divergent pit strategies and 17 in-race penalties.

Byron went more than 20 races between wins this year, with a lengthy drought after winning the Daytona 500 before finally hitting victory road again in Iowa, but has picked up seven further top-five finishes to back up an impressively consistent year.

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Byron reveals tipping point in Richmond chaos

However, he admitted that Saturday's race kept his mind right on the edge, admitting to the media: "Yeah, I was kind of losing my mind there for a minute. Just felt like there was so much going on. Just such a balance of trying to manage tires all night. It just got crazy on those couple restarts. That one restart was kind of the tipping point.

"We had honestly some really good runs tonight. Was happy with, like, the end of stage one, the beginning of stage two. Throughout stage two was pretty good. Beginning of stage three, we climbed, had that one set of tires that we put on, we fell way back."

He continued: "It’s really the best 12th-place finish I’ve ever had. We came in here and really just did a solid job. We qualified solid. We always want more, but this is definitely our toughest racetrack. We just kind of came in here, had a solid plan and executed it.

"This team has worked extremely hard. All the guys have worked hard through the summer months. Feel like this has been the best summer we’ve ever had speed-wise. Had a lot of tough things happen throughout probably really early July. We had a lot of speed, but some crashes in practice and qualifying. Just some car issues and things that happened."

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