Friday 5: Is William Byron the model or the exception for future racers?

Eleven years after first competing in a race car at age 14, William Byron could be headed for his first NASCAR Cup championship.

If the 25-year-old Byron wins the title next month at Phoenix Raceway, he’d be one of the sport’s youngest series champions. Only Bill Rexford (23), Jeff Gordon (24) and Chase Elliott (24) would have won a Cup crown at a younger age.

But if William Byron were 14 years old today and just starting to drive a race car, could he still have a chance to win the Cup championship a little over a decade later?

There are more avenues available for children to begin racing at an early age these days. Getting a late start racing cars as Byron did — even with his previous experience on iRacing — could be challenging.

INEX, the sanctioning body for U.S. Legend Cars International, lowered the minimum age requirement for its Bandolero division from age 8 to 7 in September 2022. INEX also lowered the minimum age to compete in a Legend Car from age 12 to 10 provided drivers had sufficient experience racing at an earlier age.

While the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series are at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend, about 150 NASCAR Youth Series quarter midget drivers will compete across the street at zMax Dragway. There are about 6,000 quarter midget drivers, age 5-17, across the country, according to Ben McFarland, series director.

Although some of those racing at an early age will move to other interests, those that remain will gain valuable experience that could help their climb up the racing ladder. That makes the question of how far a late starter to racing, such as Byron, can go if they are beginning years behind some of their competitors.

Byron doesn’t see reason for late-starters to be too worried.

“I think you can still do it that way, just because I feel like it’s more of a maturity thing,” Byron said. “I don’t think that me starting younger would have yielded the same results. I just feel like me starting when I did, I felt like I understood things. I watched racing for a long time, and I had a little bit better idea of what I was looking to do.

“I feel like starting really young is fine, if that’s what you choose to do. But it’s easy to get burnt out, too. So you don’t want to be burnt out at 14 years old — have raced for so many years, so many weekends, that you don’t have much of a life outside of that. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of things by starting when I did and kind of going from there, and still having the desire and the drive now to do it every weekend.”

More than half the 12 remaining playoff drivers first began competing in motorsports before they were 10 years old, including Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin and former champion Kyle Larson.

Blaney, who won last weekend at Talladega, and Byron are the only drivers to secure a spot in the Round of 8. This marks the third year in a row the 29-year-old Blaney has reached that round. It…