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Kaulig Racing CEO: Ty Dillon not at fault for wreck with William Byron at Las Vegas

ProfilePhotoby: Nick Geddes10/15/25NickGeddesNews
Ty Dillon
Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice said Wednesday that Ty Dillon and the No. 10 team were not at fault for the wreck with William Byron in Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Rice said that Dillon was “doing his own thing,” and coming down pit road late in Stage 3 when Byron plowed into the back of him.

“Man, we can blame it on a lot of things. I can tell you what’s unfortunate for us is couple $100,000 damage for a car that was slow, and then it hurt the 24 in the playoffs. But man, it’s racing, dude,” Rice said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “The green flag is out. When you’re racing, it’s out. The pit road was open. You can do what you wanna do. Blame it on what you wanna blame it on, go watch a lot of the guys pit at that place.

“… I hate placing blame on somebody that was actually just running his own race. He was doing his own thing, he was doing his own deal, just trying to make the best of it. I’m not the guy that’s gonna sit here and take up for my driver, but what I am gonna say is they were doing their own thing. I don’t feel like they were in the wrong.”

Dillon was having a tough day at Las Vegas, running off the lead lap while Byron was sitting in second place. Byron said he never got indication that Dillon was coming to pit road at a time where the cycle was over. Not a wave out the window, nothing.

Rice said a wave wouldn’t have mattered. Unless it was Shane van Gisbergen waving, Byron nor any driver would have seen it.

Ty Dillon free of blame, Kaulig Racing CEO says

“You would have never seen his hand out the window. I don’t care, he could have had his hand all the way out the window,” Rice said. “The only person you could have seen his hand out the window was SVG, he has long enough hands. But everybody else, you’re not gonna see it. They sit too far back in the race car, you can’t see out of those cars anyways. Man, them things are hard to drive now. William was probably on his own agenda.”

Unfortunately for Byron, he went from, at the very least, securing a top five or 10 finish to finishing 36th. He is now minus-15 points below the cutline with two Round of 8 races remaining.

Rice hates it for Byron. At the same time, he isn’t willing to take the blame for what happened.

“I hate it but at the end of the day, it’s not on the 10 car. I’m not gonna say that,” Rice said. “The green flag was out. It’s called racing, you’ve gotta have slow cars to pass so you have a good race. If you don’t have slow cars and you just have fast cars riding around, it’s gonna be an awful race. So, we were slow that day, and he would have passed us in the next corner or whatever.

“I hate it for everybody, but I’m not gonna take blame. You’re sitting at a stop light and get hit from the back end, are you gonna take blame that the car from behind you hit you?”