Skip to main content
Join Now
NASCAR Logo

Rudy Fugle places blame on Ty Dillon, No. 10 team for crash with William Byron at Las Vegas

ProfilePhotoby: Nick Geddes10/14/25NickGeddesNews
William Byron
Michael C. Johnson-Imagn Images

No. 24 team crew chief Rudy Fugle said Tuesday that from his perspective, Ty Dillon and the No. 10 team did a poor job of communicating their intentions of coming down pit road in Stage 3 of Sunday’s Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There was a breakdown in communication, and it led to William Byron, running second at the time, slamming into the back of Dillon’s No. 10 Chevrolet at full speed.

Fugle said that for starters, Dillon never waved his hand out the window to notify Byron he was going off the racetrack. He added that Dillon’s spotter, Joseph White, was late in informing them.

“There are two things that can happen and needs to happen on every one of those stops,” Fugle said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “In my opinion, maybe I’m old school — I’m a person who still doesn’t mind making a phone call instead of sending a text message or any of those things — I think just culture wise, we all need to do our job of communicating better. From a driver’s standpoint, there was no hand out the window, there’s a lot of people that will be busy and they will do a swerve low on the backstretch which usually means I’m coming to pit road. He had the opportunity to, running between the leaders in a really poor running position on track, take a really shallow entry and make sure he was out of the way to hit pit road. All those things are possible and should have been done, in my opinion.

“From the spotter stand, I’m not up there but Brandon [Lines], our spotter, didn’t get clear communication that that’s what’s going on and definitely didn’t get that early enough. His attention was gotten when William was getting into Turn 3 and as soon as you take your eyes off the track as you’re entering Turn 3, there’s not enough time to say what’s going on and process who’s saying what. So, the other thing that can and should happen, especially when somebody is off the pace and running in between two leaders and pitting 20 some laps off the pit cycle, should probably come down and say, ‘Hey, we’re getting ready to pit, be ready.’ I wasn’t there, but it didn’t seem that communication was done either. Yeah, that all could have been done better.”

William Byron’s championship hopes took a big hit at Las Vegas

The incident left Byron devastated. He had a car capable of winning at Las Vegas, and that car ended up junked. Byron is now minus-15 points below the cutline with two Round of 8 races remaining.

“I’m just bummed out,” Byron said after the race. “You know that these opportunities are few, and we had a really good car today, in contention to win. Everything has to go right in the Round of 8, and that’s something major that went wrong that was out of our control.”