William Byron was in a solid position to win last weekend’s Las Vegas Motor Speedway race. Heading into the penultimate lap, Byron was running second, but an unfortunate contact with Kaulig Racing’s Ty Dillon ended his hopes.
Kaulig Racing has fired Dillon’s spotter, Joe Allen, for failing to communicate with the No. 10 to prevent the crash. Team president Chris Rice says he plans to take additional steps to make amends for Byron’s misfortune.
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Rice spoke on Wednesday morning’s “The Morning Drive on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio”, expressing frustration that the incident impacted a championship contender. However, he stood by his driver, Dillon, saying he had done nothing wrong.
“When I look at what happened, man, we can blame it on a lot of things, but I’m going to tell you it’s unfortunate for us. (A) couple of hundred thousand dollars of damage for a car that was slow, and it hurt the 24 in the Playoffs, but man, it’s racing dude,” Rice said.
“Ryan (Flores), you know, you drive. The green flag is out, I mean, you don’t — when you’re racing, it’s out. The pit road was open. You can do what you want to do, you can blame it on what you want to blame it on,” he added.
While some felt Dillon’s position on the track made a pit stop hazardous and led to the crash, Rice pointed out that the lane he was in matched what other drivers used to get onto pit road throughout the race.
“Go watch a lot of the guys pit at that place. Was Ty off the bottom? Absolutely. (But) go watch (Michael McDowell) when (Shane van Gisbergen) passed him,” Rice explained. “I hate placing blame on somebody who 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. Dude, I’m not the guy who is going to sit here and take up for my driver, but what I am going to say is they were doing their own thing. I don’t feel like they were in the wrong,” he added.
Looking ahead to this weekend’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, Rice said Kaulig Racing will instruct its drivers that if they can help Byron win or gain points in the closing laps, they are likely to do so if it fits within the context of the race.
“We absolutely want to win a manufacturer championship. We want to be part of that, and anything we can do to help (with) that this weekend — if we can push the 24 to a win, we’ll probably do that,” Rice said.
While last Sunday’s crash crushed what had been a promising Round of 8 start for the No. 24 Chevrolet, there’s a potential upside: at Talladega, Byron will have two additional Kaulig Racing cars to help correct the misfortune from Las Vegas.