William Byron explains early overheating issues due to garbage bag across his grille

Early on William Byron had one of the fastest cars in the Pennzoil 400. Then a garbage bag came flying across his grille. At least, that is what appeared to be covering the front end of his NASCAR racecar.

Like a rock in water, William Byron started to fall through the field. After running top-5 to start the race, Byron had to hit pit road to remove the debris. By the time he did, he went down a lap, had to fight his way back, and finally finished P10.

Could today have been better? Yes. But given the situation, Byron made the most of his day in Las Vegas.

“It was huge,” Byron said of the debris, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “It seemed to get stuck somewhere underneath, I don’t really know. I don’t know, I just know my temps went from 250 or whatever to 350 in like ten seconds, so I’ve never had that happen.”

Byron gave a breakdown of how the debris affected the car. Once those temps shot up, he knew he was in trouble.

“Think it was on the front of the nose at first and we’ve got a black nose [on the car] so it’s probably really hard to tell that,” Byron continued. “Once it got farther up the nose then it overheated. It got to – it went from – it normally runs like low 200s or whatever and it got to 290 pretty quick and it would just climb one degree every half second and it got to 350. So, nothing we can do about that. Just the second half was just sloppy and me sliding through the box and just the whole thing. Still get a top-10, the car was super fast and we’ll go on to Phoenix.”