Rice: Kaulig Intends to Help Byron/Hendrick Motorsports at Dega

William Byron saw a spectacular end to what had been a great day in last Sunday's South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Byron, who won the second Stage of the race, and was running in the runner-up position to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson with under 40 laps to go, saw the unthinkable happen.

On Lap 235, Ty Dillon, a lapped car who had yet to make his final green flag pit stop of the race, was about a half lane off of the white stripe at the bottom of the track, the lane Byron was running, in Turns 3 and 4. As Dillon dramatically slowed his No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet in an effort to get to pit road entrance, Byron had no idea Dillon was pitting, and with the insane closing rate, Byron plowed through the rear-end of the No. 10 machine.

Instantly, both drivers saw their race come to an end, and for Byron, one of the eight NASCAR Cup Series Playoff contenders, he saw his hopes of a Championship 4 appearance take a drastic turn from 22 points above the cutline, to 15 points below the cutline with two races remaining in the Round of 8.

Chris Rice, the CEO of Kaulig Racing, made his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Wednesday morning's edition of The Morning Drive, where he admitted that he hated that the incident ruined the day for one of the guys running for the championship, but that he still feels Dillon, his driver, did nothing wrong in the incident.

"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."

Many felt Dillon was too far up the track if he was intending to come to pit road on that lap, and have blamed that for the accident, but Rice said the lane that Dillon was in was similar to the line others took to get on pit road all race long.

"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."

Here is a video of the other close call coming to pit road in the South Point 400 between McDowell and van Gisbergen on Lap 40 that Rice was referencing:

Shane van Gisbergen's close call with Michael McDowell yesterday pic.twitter.com/Yw3h5FbS2v
— Andrew (@Basso488) October 14, 2025

To the credit of Rice and Dillon, that near-incident was nearly identical to what happened between Dillon and Byron later in the race.

While Rice doesn't feel Dillon did anything wrong in the crash, the CEO of Kaulig Racing says that he and his team still feel really bad about what the crash, involving them, did to the championship hopes of Byron, who was the regular-season champion.

Heading into this weekend's YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, Rice says Kaulig Racing will emphasize to its drivers that if they are in a position to help Byron win the race or gain points in the closing laps of the race, they will likely do it if it makes sense in the context of the race.

"... to hurt a Chevy is nothing we want to do. 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. "You know what I mean, I'm just going to go ahead and put that out, if we're behind the 24, if one of our cars is behind the 24, and we can push him to a win this weekend, that's what we're going to do to try to give back this weekend. I don't want to see it for Hendrick, I don't want to see it for us."

So, while last Sunday's back-breaker of a crash ruined what looked to be a solid start to the Round of 8 for the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet, it appears that a silver lining has formed as he will come into Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway with two additional quasi-teammates in Kaulig Racing, who would like to right a perceived wrong that was handed to the No. 24 team last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Unlike two of Byron's three Hendrick Motorsports teammates, the Kaulig duo won't have their own championship hopes to cloud whether or not they help Byron.

You never know, the crash at Las Vegas, could just be the thing that leads to Byron taking a Championship 4 berth-securing win at Talladega this weekend.

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