CONCORD, N.C. - As crew chief Rudy Fugle sees it, there's no use crying over crashed race cars.
And this time of year, there's not time either.
Unquestionably, Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway presented an unfortunate set of circumstances to the No. 24 Chevy team. Driver William Byron had kept his car planted firmly in the top 3-5 all day, winning stage one and finishing third in stage two. As the final segment crept closer toward conclusion, Byron was at the front of the field, battling with teammate Kyle Larson for the top spot and a potential win to lock into the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4.
But before either Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet could see the checkered flag, Byron was caught up in a crash not of his own doing, ending his day, relegating the team to a 36th-place finish and putting the team, which spent the majority of the season atop the points standings, 15 markers below the playoff cutline with two races remaining in the round.
Byron used the word, "devastated" in postrace interviews. Even on Tuesday as Fugle appeared on SiriusXM for a radio interview, the disappointment was still evident. And yet, Fugle said the team has but one option:
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"It sucks. Super mad and disappointed. Devastated in the moment but this time of year, you've got to punch the clock on last week on Sunday night and Monday morning, when the plane lands, you've got to move forward and try to build another winning race car. That's what we started doing yesterday on short sleep and we were back doing it today. That's all we can do."
In a vacuum, that next-race mentality is certainly a beneficial mentality to adopt when the weeks and races - 36 of the points-paying variety in all - come fast and heavy. But there's also reasoning behind it and as Fugle points out, with a championship still hanging in the balance, any other approach would be a disservice to all involved.
"We've been working our guts out since January 2 of this year," Fugle explained. "Since the playoffs started, I can count on one hand how many true days off I've had and that's everybody on this team and everybody on this campus. So, if you're going to let something that already happened affect your mindset and potentially mess up the last three weeks of your season - we have 14-and-a-half days of prepping race cars to go to the track and 19-and-a-half days of our season left and if you don't make it (to the Championship 4), your season ends seven days shorter - if you let that happen, you threw away your entire year.
"And the way I look at it, it's an entire career for me, that has been trying to get to this achievement. They're all stepping stones, some up and some down, but always trying to climb to the top and if you let something like that screw you up, it's a huge step back and a waste of time for this year for me and the team and really, a career for me. So, you've just got to move on and try to win the next race."
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Fugle would be the first to admit, that is usually much easier said than done, especially with the parity in the NASCAR Cup Series during the Next Gen era. And even by those standards, prevailing at Talladega Superspeedway, where chaos is always one faulty decision away, is a different animal entirely.
Aside from crashes, fuel strategy has become paramount since the Gen 7 car's introduction before the 2022 season and for Byron and the 24 team, that provides a bit of a tricky dilemma. Just 15 points down, the team is hardly in a must-win situation, but points will be paramount, including the bonus tallies awarded for top-10 showings in stage one and stage two.
Each segment, which will require a pit stop, will also necessitate meticulous planning and perfect from timing from Fugle and likely, the pack of Chevrolets the team hopes to pit alongside.
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"The biggest advantage to the fuel savings is when you get a green-flag pit cycle and you're able to pit with the group you want to pit with and then you can execute that really well and go from mid pack to slightly behind mid pack and go to the lead," Fugle said. "Where it hurts the most is if you're saving too much fuel, working on saving too much fuel and running 25th and the caution comes out as soon as everyone can make it. And then you come down pit road 25th under yellow and you only need three tenths of a second less gas than the leader and you go from 25th to 20th and now you're just logjammed.
"We'll be trying to get toward that top-12, top-15 range, save gas and then really be in the top five in the second half (of stages) when you have enough fuel to get to the stage end and end of the race."
There are certainly some positives working for the team heading into Sunday's race. First, Byron is third this season among remaining playoff drivers in terms of points earned on drafting tracks with 150 in five events. Only teammates Larson (177) and Chase Elliott (173) have earned more. And while Byron's not yet prevailed at Talladega, five of his 15 career Cup Series victories have come at drafting tracks including back-to-back DAYTONA 500s (2024 and 2025).
And as for those teammates, along with Alex Bowman, Hendrick Motorsports has been more than formidable when it's come to superspeedway racing as of late. Fugle said he doesn't expect that to change any time soon.
"I think we can all take care of each other," Fugle said. "It's not necessarily that we're going to line up and push each other because I don't know that's always the fastest for our cars. That lets our guys be a little bit free, be a little bit selfish when they need to.
"We have each other's back. If somebody needs to get down so we can get to pit road, we're going to do that. The trust will be there until the very last lap this weekend."