Freddie Kraft, Ty Dillon sound off on Kyle Busch sparking debate with spotter vs. camera comments

Kyle Busch raised eyebrows over the weekend when he suggested that if cars have rearview cameras, they shouldn’t have access to a spotter. Or vice versa.

He thinks the combination of the two is a little too much, and he’d like to see drivers have to rely a little bit more on their organic communication with spotters. Others aren’t as convinced such a change is necessary.

At the very least, they don’t like the idea of ditching spotters in favor of the cameras. Freddie Kraft, a spotter for Bubba Wallace, joined Ty Dillon on the Door Bumper Clear podcast and the two dissected the topic.

“I like the fact that he said he would pick the spotter,” Kraft said with a laugh. “Thank you, Kyle Busch. I didn’t expect that out of him.”

But the topic does merit conversation. Dillon actually said he would be in favor of ditching the cameras for spotters.

“I’m with Kyle. I would go with spotter,” Dillon said. “These in-car cameras, I think they’re too good. I think it’s made the blocking ridiculous. I grew up dirt racing, so we had nothing. We don’t want to go that far. I think spotting, having a spotter and no mirrors would be the way I would go for sure.”

But both Dillon and Kraft preached about the value of having a spotter. It’s less about the competitive aspect of racing — though they can certainly help in that regard — and more about safety.

“Our job first and foremost is safety,” Kraft said. “We have definitely gone way more into the competition side, but first and foremost our job is — why we became mandatory — is for safety.

“I think for safety purposes I think everybody should have them. But you saw that hit that Brad (Keselowski) took the other night where he’s spinning around and finally lands and here comes somebody five minutes later and hits him hard enough where he continues to flip. So I just think that for safety purposes you should always have one.”

Dillon seconded that, pointing to some issues at Chicago that weren’t as smooth from the spotter end of things. And when the spotter isn’t functioning the way it’s supposed to, it can have potentially devastating consequences.

“And recently enough, Chicago, there was somebody sitting in the middle of the track for two laps,” Dillon explained. “We didn’t have spotters down there, had no clue he was there. A guy like Will Brown comes all the way from Australia, puts a lot of money into this thing. We have that big pile-up, they didn’t have a spotter down there. Runs right into it. And the spotter stand was behind a tree, you guys couldn’t see anything as is.

“There was three to four instances where we didn’t have spotters in an area, there was cars sitting broadside, driver side, and luckily nobody got hurt in those situations. It was because we didn’t have spotters. To me, you’ve got to have them.”