NASCAR insiders react to brutal William Byron wreck with Ty Dillon, investigate blame

William Byron was on track to secure, at the very least, a top five finish in Sunday’s Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Late in Stage 3, while running second, that all went away.

Byron crashed into the back Ty Dillon, who had slowed up coming around Turn 4 to come down pit road. Byron claimed he had zero indication Dillon was hitting pit road, and he ran into the back of his No. 10 Chevrolet at full speed. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic wasn’t sure why Dillon and his team weren’t extra cautious making that move to pit road while laps down and with the leaders rapidly approaching them.

“It didn’t seem like from what I can tell — because originally on Byron’s radio they were like, ‘Oh, Dillon came from two lanes up down the track.’ I thought it didn’t seem like it was extreme, but what was different was you didn’t see a lot of waving,” Gluck said on The Teardown podcast. “You didn’t see a lot of waving another car, and even though it sounded like his spotter was saying, ‘hey, we let them know,’ clearly, they didn’t know. I find it ironic that all the talk about manufacturer teamwork and communication over the last week, you have a Chevy pitting really late, they’re not racing for positions.

“Sometimes, I understand you don’t wanna wave off a driver too much because you’re coming to pit road and you’re trying to short pit, so you’re not trying to alert the competition. But clearly, he was on a different pit strategy by pitting way later after it seemed like the pit cycle was well over. Clearly, Byron didn’t think there was any cars left to pit. And so, you would think if you’re going to be in that situation, you better be damn sure that the people around you know this guy is pitting. Waving a lot or making the spotter know whatever, it just seemed like that didn’t happen here. Now, was he super high on the track? That didn’t seem like it.”

William Byron falls below playoff cutline after Las Vegas playoff race

Something didn’t get communicated between the two teams and it cost Byron. The regular season champion is now minus-15 below the cutline with two Round of 8 races remaining. Gluck’s colleague, Jordan Bianchi, agreed with his assessment. He was stuck on Dillon and his team not doing nearly enough to alert Byron that they were coming down pit road.

“The bigger picture here is this was an accident, no one planned on this, but this was really unnecessary because Ty Dillon and the 10 team are having a bad day. They’re out to lunch today, they’re not having a good day, the highest they ran today was 27th. They, obviously, are just not in this,” Bianchi said. “In this situation late in the race, you would think there would be awareness of listen, we are laps down, we don’t wanna screw anyone. Forget the Chevy thing, we don’t wanna screw anyone.

“You should be shooting off fireworks off the spotter’s stand or waving flags or something to let everyone know we’re gonna pit, or you just say listen, the leaders are coming quick, they’re on our butt on newer tires, so you know they’re gonna get there pretty quick, we’re just gonna pull over sooner and unconventionally get on to pit road different than we normally do. But again, you don’t have to worry about track position because your day is already over pretty much, or you let them go by and then you pit. This feels like it could have been handled very differently… unfortunately for William Byron, he’s the casualty in this.”