The trash bag that ruined William Byron’s chance to win the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday left another layer in its wake.
In addition to covering the grill opening of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24, it also deposited a beer can in its air filter during the Pennzoil 400.
Crew chief Rudy Fugle detailed what his team found after the race ended.
“The thing was like a 55-gallon trash bag, you know, for those big trash cans you see at the infield of the racetracks,” said Fugle of SiriusXM NASCAR’s The Morning Drive on Monday. “It got loose.
“Even worse than that, or even funnier than that, I’m pretty positive it had a beer can in it because that beer can got stuck in our air filter. So after the race, there was a Silver Bullet in our air filter somehow.
“Never seen anything like that before … so quite the day.”
It was a blustery day in the desert with winds up to 50 mph being recorded near the speedway that sits adjacent to Nellis Air Force Base.
Byron led 14 of the first 30 laps on Sunday before spiking temperatures due to the bag forced him down pit road.
“It was huge,” Byron said of the bag. “It seemed to get stuck somewhere … I don’t really know. I just know my temps went from like 250 to 350 in like 10 seconds. I’ve never had that happen.”
Byron placed some of the second half challenges on himself too.
“It was just sloppy,” Byron said. “The whole thing. Had good speed. We’ll take the top-10 and go to Phoenix.”
Fugle echoed a lot of those sentiments.
“I hate that it didn’t give us a chance to show, really, how strong a car, I think, we could have had all day long,” Fugle added. “You leave there with a couple of questions. We fought all day and got up there toward the top 10, but we slid through the (pit) box on the last green flag stop and lost some spots and then just weren’t as good on the restarts as we needed to be.”
Whatever happened to that bag?
“I think one of the sponsors that were there, they had the bag and they were pretty disappointed, obviously, because we were leading and doing so well,” Fugle said. “I seen them after the race with it. So, I’m like, okay that’s a souvenir for him.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.