Rudy Fugle discusses genius pit call for Martinsville winner William Byron

Last night’s race was a historic win for the Hendrick Motorsports team as they won on their 40th anniversary and also claimed a 1-2-3 finish for the first time ever at Martinsville Speedway.

William Byron took the win in the Cook Out 400. However, it all came down to a strategy call made by his Crew Chief, Rudy Fugle, who decided to pit Byron early before everyone else in their green flag stop in the third stage of the race.

When speaking to NASCAR after the race Fugle stayed humble and preferred to credit the win to the driver of the #24 car rather than his own strategy call:

“I think we all knew what laps we wanted to pit on and as a group we talked about it and William just had a lot of grip when he came out of the pits so he passed all those cars in front of him so I put it on him you know we can talk about the call but the reality is we had to have a car good enough and he did it when he got on track so I’m really, really proud of him.”

Fugle has also led Byron to victories at COTA and in the Daytona 500 this year and spoke on how big this race win really is for himself, the team and all of Hendrick Motorsports compared to the other two this season:

“This is pretty big; this one is going to be remembered for a long time. Just so thankful for all of our employees giving us such a great race car and getting to come and bring their families and they showed out with 1,500 people here it was nuts all those red shirts. I wish Mr and Mrs Hendrick was able to be here I'm so proud of them and so thankful for them, this is just a proud moment.”