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Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon knows a thing or two about building summer momentum at Watkins Glen. Three of his four NASCAR Cup Series championships included a trip to victory lane at the 2.45-mile road course in Western New York.

Could William Byron be making new memories on the way to another championship for the No. 24?

A lot has changed since Gordon last hoisted Cup's title trophy in 2001. He didn't have to deal with the 10-race playoff reset, giving 15 other competitors a chance to trash a dominant driver in front of them.

But the NASCAR Hall of Famer knows what he has in Byron, striking out the competition with his Cup Series-leading fifth win of the year in Sunday's Go Bowling at the Glen.

"He's capable of winning everywhere," Gordon said of the 25-year-old who's enjoying a career year. "I know for us as we look at drivers and evaluate drivers, that's what you're looking for is somebody that's diverse, somebody that's aggressive but also knows how to save the equipment when they need to, somebody that can stay calm in stressful situations."

Byron checked those boxes during a Glen race that had only one caution in 90 laps. It meant one mistake was all you needed to be out of the running, like early leader Michael McDowell's penalty for running through too many pit boxes during an early stop.

That left the No. 24 car out front and Byron put it on cruise control from there, leading 65 of the final 67 laps to earn his first career NASCAR road course victory. 28 valuable playoff points now make him a near-lock to earn the postseason's No. 1 seed for the first time in his six-year Cup career.

Martin Truex Jr., the likely regular season points champion, had been closing in on Byron after a strong summer. Sunday's win broke a streak of five straight races outside the top 10 for the No. 24 car, easily their worst stretch of the season, while Truex won once and never finished lower than seventh during the same stretch.

But there was another driver at Hendrick who had a history of struggling during the summer: seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. The master of the sport's playoff era won just seven times in July and August, four of those coming on the oval at Indianapolis, long considered one of the sport's crown jewel events.

"I think [Jimmie's crew chief, Chad Knaus] was similar in his days with Jimmie," Byron concurred. "We really focus on those [final] 10 races and focus on what that looks like and build our setups around that.

"I think we do kind of lose sight maybe in July and August of kind of what is still at play there, but I think that yeah, we're focused on those races. ... We've just got to keep building, but I think the tracks suit us well."

As does Byron's demeanor, maturing into the confidence of a championship contender in real time with the playoffs right around the corner.

"He's pretty calm and cool off the track," Gordon said. "But he's aggressive on the track. That's everything you can ask for out of a driver."

Just like when Gordon led that car to 93 victories and total domination within the sport. Is Byron finally positioned to live up to the legend?

Traffic Report

Green: Denny Hamlin. A second-place finish for the pole sitter was Hamlin's fourth top-three result in the last five Cup races. It's left him with an outside shot to catch Truex for that regular season points title, although it could be much closer. Remember, Hamlin was docked 25 points by NASCAR in March for acknowledging an intentional wreck of Ross Chastain on his own podcast.

Yellow: Kevin Harvick. The 2014 Cup champion, who's retiring after the season, finally clinched a playoff bid on points after the Glen produced no new first-time winner for 2023. Problem is, there's little here to get excited about for this Stewart-Haas Racing program. Harvick's got 10 laps led in the last 11 races paired with five finishes of 21st or worse.

Red: Road courses. Watkins Glen produced clean racing, run in a modern-era NASCAR record 1 hour, 58 minutes and 44 seconds with only one caution flag. But shorter races don't mean more viewers if the competition is boring the whole way through. Passing proved near impossible at both the Glen and Indianapolis the week before, with drivers complaining about aerodynamic issues we've never seen before on this track type. Will a 2024 Next Gen tweak fix the problem?

Speeding Ticket: Chase Elliott/Alan Gustafson. Elliott's Cup season prepared to flame out for good at the Glen after the embarrassment of running out of gas on the racetrack, leaving the two-time Glen winner limping home a lap down in 32nd.

"Can't do the same thing and expect a different result than everybody else, right?" crew chief Gustafson said after the race before refusing to go through "internal struggles" that led to the miscalculation on mileage. A nightmare year for Elliott now rests on the Russian Roulette that is Daytona. A failure to win there means NASCAR's Most Popular driver misses the playoffs.

Oops!

It took until the final lap for any major contact at the Glen, but this last-turn spin involving Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon led to hurt feelings on both sides.

"I divebombed him into the bus stop as I was coming through the pack," Larson explained. "Thankfully, he left me room because we would have crashed then … that must have really ticked him off … I really wasn't trying to crash him in the last corner, I was just trying to maintain leverage, and got in hot and hit him and crashed. So, just a frustrating result to what was going to be a good day."

Dillon left the track without comment, winding up 31st in a difficult year that's seen him post more DNFs (seven) than top-10 finishes (six).