2025 Daytona 500: How William Byron, after an unusual journey, proved his mettle as one of NASCAR's best

Stephen Nasse absolutely seethed as he climbed out of his battered, beaten race car.

A character even among the hardscrabble drivers of big time short track racing, Nasse had just crashed out of a chance to win the Snowball Derby, the biggest and most prestigious race in the country for late model stock car racing. And if Nasse couldn't win, he had at least made absolutely sure that the driver who spun him out couldn't either.

Before making his exit from the Snowball Derby, Nasse found William Byron under caution and rammed into him, taking the young and still up-and-coming driver out, before launching a tirade into what the difference between him and the 19-year-old who had run into him was.

"I'll take my car back to my shop and fix it with my bare hands," Nasse fumed. "That's something he isn't going to do, because he can't."

As aspiring NASCAR racers grow younger and have come to earn golden opportunities previously unimaginable, many have become burdened with proving that they belong, and that they are made of the same stuff as many hard nosed racers who can only imagine being in their position. And in a certain regard, there was an extra burden on William Byron to prove that he had the right stuff.

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While born in NASCAR's hub of Charlotte, N.C., Byron did not come from a racing family, nor did he have a steering wheel in his hands from the time he started to walk and talk. The son of a wealth management advisor -- whose most notable clients included the Falwell family and Liberty University -- Byron's upbringing was much like any other, including the amount of time he spent on a computer playing video games.

Only, Byron was good at iRacing. Extremely good. Good enough, in fact, that Byron's dominance of the competitive arm of the motorsports simulation service was enough to make the idea of putting him in a real race car a feasible one.

And so, at 15 years old -- uncommonly late for a young racer in this day and age -- Byron began racing Legends cars, entering a world he quickly fit into despite the ways in which he was different.

"There was definitely an adaptation period," Byron told CBS Sports. "But I feel like for me, getting in the race car was pretty much instant adaptation and comfort. It wasn't really that difficult to get started and feel at ease and comfortable with everything."

Ease and comfort may not have come so easily for someone not of Byron's makeup. Even in the early 2010s, going from online racing simulators to racing at a high level in real life was unheard of, much less was eSports taken seriously by many. And in the insular environment of the garage area, Byron was something of an outsider: In a sport full of those rough around the edges, Byron's profile was more that of a prince, from his well-groomed blonde hair to his family's finances to his very surname -- the same as Lord Byron, the famous Poet and Peer of the Romance Movement -- carrying a certain regal and elegant nature to it.

If anyone had anything to say, it quickly came to not matter. Byron quickly became a winner -- constantly -- and grasped the security and sureness that winning provides.

"None of that stuff really affected me too bad, because I just talked with my results," Byron said. "So I was able to win a lot of races, and you don't do that by accident. Just being able to back it up with results was the biggest key for me."

As dominance of the Legends circuit quickly turned to opportunities in NASCAR, the other key was the demand for Byron from some of the biggest names in the sport and the resources that became available to him. He earned a driving coach and mentor in Max Papis, whose extensive racing profile included everything from sports cars to stock cars to even Formula 1. Just two years after he started racing Legends cars, Dale Earnhardt Jr. signed Byron to drive for his late model program.

In 2015, Byron signed to drive in NASCAR's K&N Pro Series East for a Cup team owner, the late Harry Scott, in a collaboration with now-Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Marks. The next year, Byron signed a multi-year contract with the one and only Rick Hendrick -- who lured him away from Kyle Busch's Truck Series team, where Byron had broken the series record for wins by a rookie with seven.

Byron's uncommonly fast development went hand in hand with the company he kept, a treasure trove of experience and notoriety uncommonly available even to prodigies before him.

"It was just about focusing on what I could do in the car better, and I just always had those people to lean on," Byron said of the accomplished racing figures who helped in his development. "That was a huge deal being able to have those people around me to lean on and ask questions, and they really helped me sort of, I guess, improve that learning curve and get through that faster."

Everything that occurred in the six years between Byron taking the wheel of a Legends car and Byron becoming a full-time Cup Series driver for Hendrick Motorsports -- inheriting the No. 24 once driven by NASCAR legend and Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon, no less -- happened at a breakneck pace. And it featured the hardware, including championships in the Pro Series East and Xfinity Series, to justify that pace. What would come next, however, would be a more gradual and deliberate process in coming of age as a racer.

While Byron has left no doubt that he has become one of the best drivers in NASCAR on Sundays, earning 13 career wins so far and making it to the Championship Race each of the last two seasons, he has shown what he's made of -- and earned even more of a following -- by pursuing racing late model stocks. Driving for car owner Donnie Wilson, he has gained grassroots notoriety, credibility and perhaps a touch of grit and extra toughness by throwing himself into the short track racing ring. 

It has gained him respect and admiration beyond NASCAR, and it's also gained him a nickname -- "Slick Bill Byron" -- befitting of a hard nose racer. Apparently, it's a creation of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman, who told reporters at Daytona 500 Media Day about the ways he delights in teasing the polished compatriot he compared to a little brother he never had.

"He's the babyface assassin," Bowman said. "... He's like not that guy that looks tough, but then he goes out and absolutely kicks your ass."

All that by itself has proven Byron to be both for real and here to stay. But for the ways in which Byron has affirmed himself through his own powers, there are things that only victory in NASCAR's greatest race can do -- and now, in the reigning Daytona 500 champion's case, has done.

After coming out on top in what turned into a scramble to the white flag, Byron has codified himself among the great racers to come to Daytona and etch their name into the Harley J. Earl Trophy across the years. With his name now alongside those like Petty, Pearson, Earnhardt, Gordon and more, everything about who he is as a race car driver and where he came from has been validated, and the raw potential and promise of what he could be has now given way to a mark of greatness to both revel in and build upon.

"That's a signature moment of your career," Byron said of winning the Daytona 500. "It took a lot of effort from everyone involved, our whole team. It was a really special win to have that moment with them, and to be able to win a race like that, it takes a lot of weight off your shoulders for sure."

The weight of trying to win the Daytona 500, indeed, is now off William Byron's shoulders. And in some sense, so too is the weight of expectation and perception, or the burden of moving past the idea that he began his racing career "on a computer" (now a somewhat lampooned talking point that even Byron laughs about.) Now, what is in Byron's hands is a career he has built from a foundation all his own, one that now stands tall and commands respect from all those who are trying to stand alongside it.

In fact, he even put the bump and run to Stephen Nasse racing for a win in super late models at Nashville Fairgrounds in 2022. And by 2023, they were teammates in the Snowball Derby at Anthony Campi Racing -- perhaps proving they're not so different after all.