NEWTON, Iowa - What's that old saying, the one about life handing you lemons?
Well, despite some tough luck in recent weeks, lemons are far from a problem for crew chief Rudy Fugle, driver William Byron and the No. 24 Chevrolet team.
Quite the opposite in fact. Car and speed dependability, despite some misleading lackluster results, are the silver linings that still have spirits high in the 24 camp entering a crucial run of four races that will decide the NASCAR Cup Series regular season points championship.
That stretch will start on Sunday with a trip to Iowa Speedway.
"Honestly, that's the summer in NASCAR," Fugle told HendrickMotorsports.com on Thursday. "With the way the races play out, you end up in fuel mileage races, you end up in races where track position is huge and a caution at the wrong time can really mess up your day. Restarts become super hairy at the end of races, you can get caught up in wrecks and that was Dover (Motor Speedway) for us.
"It's been rough, but I think we're resting on the fact that we're showing up with really fast cars every week. We've had tough summers and tough stretches before, I think every team does, but I think this is the first one we've had really, really fast cars every single week."
Fugle alluded to Dover, a race in which Byron was a fixture in the top five all day until being collected in a crash, not of his own doing, with just a handful of laps to go. He ran out of fuel after leading 98 laps at Michigan International Speedway and again came up just short on gas at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this past Sunday, despite running in the top three all day.
And yet, it's a perfect case of Fugle not judging performance strictly by finishes.
"We kind of focus on what the speed metrics are for everything we do and then hope that we can execute the right way and sometimes you can look at it and say, 'We need to execute better,' and there’s probably a couple of those but most of them, it’s luck or something out of our hands that comes into play," Fugle said. "Our speed metrics and how we run on a weekly basis is P1 all year long and hasn’t really dived down much, even in this stretch.
"The pit crew is operating at its highest level of the year the last couple of weeks. They’ve been working really, really hard. They don’t get to show it at the road courses a lot of times but as we’ve gone to Dover and Indy, it’s showed up and I think the driver and the road crew are doing a great job driving the cars and building the cars.
"We just want to have fast cars and the driver wants to drive fast and we want to compete up front. That’s what makes racing fun. It stings into Sunday night and Monday morning when you don’t get the finish, but when you get to have fun all weekend long it makes it where you’re excited to go to the track again. If you’re slow you’re dreading and worrying how you’re going to be going to the track and right now, we’re not doing that."
RELATED: Relive Jeff Gordon's 1995 NASCAR Cup Series championship
Even if Fugle, Byron and the 24 team were keen to throw pity parties, which is obviously not the case, right now, there's simply no time.
Despite its run of misfortune, the team finds itself locked into a razor-thin battle for the regular season points title, just four tallies back of leader and teammate Chase Elliott. While another Hendrick Motorsports driver, Kyle Larson, is just 15 off of Elliott's lead in third while Denny Hamlin enters Iowa 20 points out of the top spot.
On the line? A trophy and some bragging rights, for sure, but much more critically is a bonus of 15 points that could prove crucial in advancing from round-to-round in the Cup Series playoffs.
“That’s what we’re trying to stack,” Fugle said of the playoff markers. “We have 12 playoff points right now, that’s with seven stage wins, which is one of the higher totals in the series, so that’s good. But we’ve had so many close calls on wins that we haven’t capitalized on, this is a way as we’re closing out the year to basically get three wins out of the regular season championship points.
“I don’t know that there’s a ton of momentum that comes out of just being the regular season champion. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. I love that we have a trophy. I love the fact we celebrate it. I love the fact we get points for it. It’s cliché, but we’re here for the playoffs and the next trophy 10 weeks later. So, nobody gets focused on that too much. I don’t think it gives a ton of momentum, but the momentum comes from having those playoff points in the bank and that’s what we’re trying to get.”
Certainly, if the 24 team is to reverse its recent swoon and reclaim its perch atop the heap, the final four races would seem to set up perfectly. After all, Byron has a victory at Iowa in the K&N Pro Series East (2015), the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series (2016, with Fugle on the box) and the Xfinity Series (2017) while finishing second there last year. He also rolled to victory lane at Watkins Glen International in the Cup Series in 2023 and as for Daytona International Speedway, the group just registered its second straight DAYTONA 500 win in February to go with Byron's first win in the premier series in the summer race in 2020.
RELATED: Highlights from Hendrick Motorsports pit crew minicamp
And so, the team's forward focus remains its solace in overcoming the unfortunate circumstances of weeks past. In other words, and as the old saying goes, making lemonade.
Even if by race car standards, the team has been handed anything but lemons.
“Really excited about the opportunity coming up to try and go win this thing,” Fugle concluded. “It’s a four-horse race and all of us have a lot of strengths and not many weaknesses.
“It’ll be a crapshoot. It’ll be a close race in Daytona, for sure. We’ll be counting points and trying to figure out how to get there, so, it’ll be exciting. It’s almost like a mini playoff round to try and practice up a little bit.”