William Byron has been watching his Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series teammate, Kyle Larson, have so much fun moonlighting in the Dirt Late Model ranks, he figured he’d like to join him.

“I kind of put a bug in Larson’s ear a few months ago,” Byron said, “just trying to see what I could do on the Dirt Late Model side of things.”

A 24-year-old native of Charlotte, N.C., now in his fifth season of Cup racing after taking over the seat of Jeff Gordon’s iconic No. 24 in 2018, Byron will get his chance to drive a Dirt Late Model for the first time Thursday in the Kyle Larson Presents Late Model Challenge powered by Tezos at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn. He will climb behind the wheel of the Mike Nuchols Warrior Chassis house car for the $20,000-to-win event, which is, of course, promoted by Byron’s buddy Larson and will include the reigning Cup Series champion in its field.

Tackling one of dirt-track racing’s top divisions will certainly present a formidable challenge for Byron, whose only previous experience racing on a clay surface came in last year’s inaugural Food City Dirt Race for the Cup Series at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (he finished sixth). But he accepts that fact as he embraces a new endeavor.

“I don’t have any expectations,” Byron said in an interview with FloRacing. “This is a big race and it’s not an easy way to start, so if I can just makes laps and show promise and show some pace it would be nice and then we’ll kind of see where it goes from there.”

Byron will arrive in the Dirt Late Model world feeling like he’s as prepared as a driver can be without ever having slung one of the cars around a track in competition. He has this sense from all the laps he’s made with a Dirt Late Model in iRacing, the on-line simulation game that proved to be a wonderful learning tool for his racing career when he was a teenager. Before making his real-world motorsports debut in a Legends car at the age of 15, he was a voracious iRacer and won more than 100 races.

“To be honest, my desire to do (dirt racing) came from iRacing, kind of doing a lot of the dirt stuff on there,” Byron said. “I got really hooked and really just started to love it during the (coronavirus) pandemic … I really never raced anything but the Cup car and the sprint cars (while NASCAR racing was shutdown in the spring of ’20). The sprint cars I thought were fairly easy to learn because they were fast and momentum-based, but with the dirt Late Model, I just recently kind of got into that (on iRacing) probably the last two months, and the way you have to drive ‘em, get ‘em up on the bars on entry, and the way that that feels on the sim compared to real life, they’re a challenge for sure. They’re a lot harder to drive than I thought they’d be, just kind of understanding the setup side of things and why it works the way it does.”

VIDEO: William Byron spoke to FloRacing about his upcoming Dirt Late Model debut. 

Byron was finally able to compare Dirt Late Model’s iRacing version to the real thing April 4 when he visited Carolina Speedway in Gastonia, N.C., to test a car provided by Carson Ferguson, an up-and-coming Late Model driver from Charlotte, N.C., and friend of Byron’s from their days racing Legends together. He turned about 40 laps and grew more comfortable — in a sense of the word, at least — with every circuit.

“I got out of the Cup car on Sunday at Richmond (International Raceway where he finished third), and the technique I was using there was slow, throttle, trying not to slip the tires,” related Byron, whose NASCAR resume includes Rookie of the Year honors in all three national divisions (Cup, Xfinity, Truck), a 2017 Xfinity Series championship and three Cup victories (the latest on March 20 at Atlanta Motor Speedway). “Richmond’s a fairly smooth place, and even for that we had some ride-quality things with the new car.

“But man, I got in that Dirt Late Model the next day and that thing was so rough. I mean, I could not believe how rough and how much movement I had up-and-down. I was pretty stuck in the seat, it was a good seat, but how much movement I had side-to-side and up-and-down, it made me really uncomfortable. I kind of like that feeling … just that feeling of discomfort and something new is helping me. But I knew I was going fast and I knew it was a lot of fun because of all those things.”

Byron told Larson about his practice session.

“I showed him a video of my last run,” Byron said. “I told him it was probably the best I looked, but I got three runs in the car. The first run I was driving the car really straight; I was using the throttle but I wasn’t turning enough, so just trying to figure out how to turn it on entry, have the right timing and all that. I love to go fast, so I felt like the last run I just kind of was starting to send it in a little more.

“I don’t know if the challenge will be going fast. It’s just gonna be reading the track, and I’m really nervous about how to race because I’ve never raced anything without mirrors or a spotter.

“I’m just really excited to have fun,” he added. “I think if it goes well I’ll do a lot more of it. It’s just a matter of trying to get to know people on that side of the world. I don’t know a single person besides Carson and Kyle Larson.”

Byron has been talking with Nuchols, the head of Seymour, Tenn.-based Warrior Race Cars, to prepare for action at Volunteer. He will travel to the Warrior shop the day before the race, which takes place just 40 minutes south of Bristol where the Cup Series will contest its dirt event Wednesday to get fitted in the car and go over strategy. Byron’s support system will also include Ryan King of Seymour, Tenn., the regular driver of the Warrior house car who will sit out Volunteer’s show to serve as a driving coach.

Nuchols, who is renumbering his No. 1G machine with Byron’s familiar No. 24 for the night, is looking forward to the opportunity to partner with Byron.

“We are excited to get the chance to work with such a great young talent and possibly have a chance to make him even better by getting him experience in Dirt Late Model racing,” Nuchols said. “He tested Monday with Carson so now he has at least a good feel of how much movement these cars have vs. what he races on pavement.

“A win for us on Thursday will be making the race. He is humble in understanding this is a big event for our sport and this race will draw a lot of great cars from all over the nation for just 22 starting spots so it will be tough just to make the race.”

Nuchols added that Byron and his Hendrick Motorsports team have been “great to work with in lining this up” and he’s hopeful that running the Dirt Late Model “will spark his interest in our sport and we can do more races with him in the future.”

Byron would like to make more than a one-and-done start in the Dirt Late Model division. He knows, after all, that he’s not going to earn any Late Model bragging rights in the Hendrick camp over Larson unless he puts some time in to learn the foreign race car.

“I don’t think there’s any chance (of beating Larson) unless the throttle comes off (Larson’s car) like it did at Bristol (on April 2),” Byron said. “I’m gonna try to learn as much as I can from him and use him as a resource. I try to pick his brain every week when he’s racing something, of kind of what it like, and just try to correlate to me what I watch and what he feels. Now I’m watching a dirt car go around a track and understand what looks fast and why he’s doing what he’s doing.”