William Byron Adds New Sponsorships During Career-Best Season

William Byron and his Hendrick Motorsports team are building their own identity. The famed No. 24 car is his for the foreseeable future, and he wants fans to enjoy seeing him grow with this team.

Besides the on-track success, Byron is building his brand thanks to the addition of new sponsors late in the 2023 season. Relay Payments, which debuted with the team at Bristol, and Z by HP
HPQ
have signed on to be primary partners on the No. 24 Chevrolet in three of the final eight Nascar Cup Series races this season. Z by HP will make its debut on the No. 24 car at the Charlotte Roval on Oct. 8.

The additional partners signal a growing interest in Byron, who has been backed by Liberty University and Axalta, a longtime Hendrick Motorsports sponsor, since his rookie campaign in 2018.

“It’s a difficult sport to get sponsorship and have partners that are invested,” Byron said. “I’m fortunate to have a few different sponsors with HP coming on board and Relay Payments. It’s great to have those partners because I feel like we’re creating a new brand for the No. 24 car with our success.

“It’s great that companies want to come on board. I think we really found the identity of our team.”

The deal with HP also includes two primary sponsorships each year from 2024-26.

“At HP, we take pride in providing innovative, high-performance solutions that empower high-performance, data-driven teams like Hendrick Motorsports to excel and set new benchmarks in their respective field,” Jim Nottingham, senior vice president and division president, Advanced Compute Solutions, said in a press release. “HP’s cutting-edge technology, including our Z by HP data science and AI workstation solution portfolio, has already contributed to the team’s remarkable success, and we are confident that our continued collaboration will drive further accomplishments and wins in the years to come.”

Byron is in the midst of having his best career season in the Cup Series. His series-high six wins marks the first time since 2007 that the No. 24 car has visited the winner’s circle this often. His win this past weekend at Texas Motor Speedway — Hendrick Motorsports’ 300th victory — locked him into the Round of 8, the second year in a row he’s reached this stage of the playoffs.

“It’s been fun,” Byron said. “We started off the year with a rocky couple of weeks, but we got it going in the third week of the year and we’ve been progressing ever since.

“We have our share of ups and downs as a team. We communicate better as a team than we did in the past. We have more experience, and our group of guys on the team have been together for about three years. We have good synergy within the team. It’s a little bit of everything.”

Byron credits his success this season to an advanced level of growth with crew chief Rudy Fugle, who he worked with in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2016 at Kyle Busch Motorsports. The pair won seven races that year, but missed out on the Championship 4 due to an engine failure in the penultimate race of the season. That success helped Byron advance to the Xfinity Series with JR Motorsports the next season, where he took home the championship as a rookie before departing to the Cup Series.

“We always kept in touch and we were really close,” Byron said of his crew chief. “We always clicked. I feel like of all the crew chiefs I’ve worked with, I thought we worked well the most. I’m fortunate that I got him back in the Cup Series and I’m fortunate that he wanted to do it as well.”

Byron also believes working with Jeff Gordon, vice chairman and co-owner of Hendrick Motorsports, has meant a great deal to him. Without Gordon’s lessons, the Cup Series learning curve might have been even longer.

“I talk to Jeff a lot, and it’s nice to have his support because he has a lot invested in the number with all of the years he’s been part of it,” Byron said.

“I feel like we just work well together. I really enjoy his personality, how he carries himself and how he addresses problems. He’s a good leader. It’s fun to work with him. He’s a boss and a friend and mentor as well.”

Now, as Byron focuses on the final few races of the season, he’s ready to bring home another championship trophy for Mr. H.

Byron said, “It’s one step at a time. We can’t think too far ahead. We have all of the resources needed to have success. We prepare really well. In our preparation, we typically get to a spot that I feel confident in with the setup. I feel good going into race weekends knowing that I have a great team behind me with something we can be competitive with. I need to continue to hone in on what it is that we need to be a little bit faster. So far, we’ve had a good start.”

It starts this weekend at Talladega, where Byron is solely after playoff points, as he currently leads the series with 41.