Freddie Kraft breaks down miscommunication in devastating William Byron, Ty Dillon wreck

It’s clear there was some sort of miscommunication that led to William Byron crashing into the back of Ty Dillon in Stage 3 of Sunday’s Round of 8 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Dillon was slowing up to come down pit road, Byron wasn’t aware of that and slammed into Dillon’s No. 10 Chevrolet at full speed.

At the time, Byron was running second. He finished 36th and is now minus-15 points below the playoff cutline. But what led to this miscommunication? Freddie Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace and the No. 23 team, has a couple theories. One, is that Byron’s spotter simply didn’t see Dillon’s spotter giving him the signal on the spotter’s stand that they were going to pit.

“I know the spotter of the 10 basically had a half a lap to communicate,” Kraft said on Monday’s Door Bumper Clear podcast. “They made the call to pit as he basically crossed the start/finish line. … He gets the call to pit, now what happens in our world is we will try to run down to the guy, if I’m spotting the 10, I will try to run down to the guy and tap him on the shoulder, ‘hey, I’m pitting this time,’ to whoever is behind you or maybe the next two guys behind you just to let them know. It’s tough, where these two guys stood, they’re very far apart on the roof, so I don’t know that the spotter of the 10 had time to go down there.

“Sometimes, you just kind of step back, get on the stool and get up and wave, or you just have a guy hanging over the rail and waving your hand, like that’s a signal to pit. But sometimes, if you’re too separated, you can’t see that. Either he didn’t have time to go down there and was trying to wave from his spot hoping he would see him and it’s pretty obvious the 24 had no idea that the 10 was pitting.”

William Byron did not think Ty Dillon was pitting

The other scenario, Kraft said, is that Byron and his team got confused by the No. 10 team’s message. While Kraft classifies this as a miscommunication, he does put some fault on Dillon.

“The other problem is, it’s possible that in this moment we also communicate as a lap down car,” Kraft said. “… When he does this, you hear the spotter of the 24 tell William that the 10 is going to run the second or third lane because I think if he did see a hand signal saying down, he might have thought that he was gonna give him the bottom and that was the message that got relayed. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but it could have happened. That could easily be confused with I’m pitting or you go to the bottom.

“Miscommunication is the best term for it because obviously, nothing was done maliciously. Ty would be the one I maybe put the most fault on just because he didn’t execute his entry very well. He ends up sliding off the bottom.”

William Byron ‘devastated’ after Las Vegas wreck

Whatever happened exactly, it left Byron devastated. He had a car capable of winning at Las Vegas, and that car ended up junked.

“I never saw him wave,” Byron told NBC Sports. “I didn’t see any indication that he was pitting, and it was probably 12 to 15 laps after we had pitted, so I thought the cycle was over. Nobody said anything to my spotter, from what I know. I had zero idea. Everybody’s been wrapping around the paint relief around the corner and that’s what I’d been doing to have a good lap. I was watching him thinking, OK, he missed the bottom here and then he just started slowing. I had no idea what was going on.

“I’m just devastated. I had no indication, so I obviously wouldn’t have driven full speed into the back of him like that.”