In Las Vegas, luck is everything — and for William Byron, Sunday it ran out faster than a tourist with a maxed-out credit card.
With just 31 laps to go in the NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 race, Byron was running second and hunting down teammate Kyle Larson for the lead when everything went sideways. Literally.
Coming out of Turn 4, Ty Dillon slowed, apparently preparing to dive for pit road. Unfortunately, Byron — barreling down at full speed — had no idea the No. 10 Chevrolet was about to slam the brakes. What happened next looked less like a racing move and more like a demolition derby audition. Byron’s No. 24 plowed straight into the back of Dillon’s car, sending both spinning in a cloud of smoke and twisted sheet metal. John Hunter Nemechek got caught in the chaos for good measure.
“I didn’t know he was pitting,” Byron said over the radio, disbelief dripping from every word.
Byron’s Chevrolet came to rest on pit road, where the damage looked bad enough to make an insurance adjuster faint. The Hendrick Motorsports crew took one look and knew it was over. Byron climbed out, done for the day, scored 36th. Dillon was 37th. Nemechek soldiered on to 29th, but all three climbed out with the same expression: equal parts frustration, disbelief, and “what the hell just happened?”
It was brutal timing for Byron — the only playoff driver involved in the incident — who’d had a car capable of winning and possibly punching his ticket to the Championship 4. The 27-year-old from Charlotte led three times for 55 laps, even winning Stage 1, and had just been overtaken by Larson for the lead before disaster struck.
“Yeah, I never saw him (Ty Dillon) wave. I didn’t see any indication that he was pitting,” Byron said afterward, clearly still processing how his night went from nearly perfect to a total catastrophe. “It was probably 12 to 15 laps after we had pitted, so I thought the cycle was fully over. Nobody said anything to my spotter, from what I know. I had zero idea. Everyone has been wrapping the paint really far around the corner and that’s what I was doing to have a good lap. I was watching him thinking – okay, he missed the bottom a little bit here. He just started slowing and I had no idea what was going on. I’m just devastated. I had no indication. Obviously, I wouldn’t have just driven full-speed into the back of him like that.”
The Regular Season Champion — and winner earlier this year at the Daytona 500 and Iowa Speedway — now faces the unenviable task of climbing out of a playoff hole deeper than the Grand Canyon. Like Ryan Blaney’s early exit in Stage 1, Byron’s Vegas crash turned what should’ve been a statement race into a salvage operation.
When asked about the frustration, Byron didn’t hold back.
“We were right there with the No. 5 (Kyle Larson). I got loose a few laps before and lost the lead, which I was bummed about,” he said. “But I was going to try and get my balance back to a reasonable place. I was a little bit loose that run, looser than I was expecting to be, and I was just kind of pacing it. With as good as we were and as good as the race was going, for random things like that to happen, it just sucks. I can’t believe it. Obviously I would never do that. During the cycle, you’re anticipating guys pitting. It just sucks.”
For Byron, the crash wasn’t just a mistake — it was the cruel irony of racing. One moment, you’re chasing a win in Sin City; the next, your car’s on a wrecker and your championship hopes are on life support.
In a town built on odds, Byron had the winning hand — until the deck suddenly reshuffled.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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