Kaulig Racing found itself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after Las Vegas. A crucial decision for the team came just days after a pivotal on-track moment during Sunday’s Vegas race. Byron had been running second when his No. 24 Chevrolet collided with Dillon’s slower car as Dillon was entering the pit road for a scheduled stop with 32 laps remaining. The contact sent both cars spinning with heavy damage. However, the day ended in misery not just for the two but for three important people.

Ty Dillon’s spotter, Joe White, was behind the wheel of a friend’s motorhome on Wednesday afternoon, en route to Talladega Superspeedway for the upcoming NASCAR Cup Series playoff race, when he received a phone call he said he had been expecting. On the other end was Kaulig Racing CEO Chris Rice, delivering the news that would make headlines before the race weekend even began, that White was out as Ty Dillon’s spotter, effective immediately.

Team Hendrick’s displeasure triggers swift firing at Kaulig Racing

“I got fired. I got let go from my position,” White said in an interview with Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic. “I’m disappointed but not surprised either, as I knew I wasn’t going back to spot that car next year anyway. (Rice) called and said, ‘How are you doing?’ And I said I was great. And he goes, ‘We’re making a spotter change starting immediately.’”

White, who has been a regular presence atop the spotter stand since 2018, said he was aware for some time that his tenure with Kaulig’s No. 10 Cup team was ending after this season. The veteran spotter had been told that he would instead transition to a Truck Series role with Kaulig in 2026, a plan that, according to him, has now also been scrapped.

Though White will be paid through the remainder of his contract, which expires at the end of the year, his immediate involvement with Kaulig is over. NASCAR’s official roster portal now links Frank Deiny as the spotter for Ty Dillon‘s No. 10 car beginning at Talladega, while T. J. Bell will take over Deiny’s previous role, spotting for A. J. Allmendinger and the No. 16 car.

Rice confirmed the new lineup when reached for comment, but declined to discuss White directly. “Frank Deiny was going to do the 10 car in 2026, and T.J. Bell was going to do the 16 car in 2026. We just decided to move forward with three races to go to get those guys used to each other. And that’s where we stand as Kaulig Racing,” he said.

At the Las Vegas race, Dillon was two laps down on the pit road, while Byron had been contending for the win. The impact proved devastating for Byron’s championship hopes. The HMS driver, who had already secured the regular-season title, left Las Vegas 15 points below the playoff cutline.

“I didn’t see any indication that he was pitting. It was probably 12 to 15 laps after we had pitted, so I thought the (pit) cycle was fully over. Nobody said anything to my spotter, from what I know. I had zero idea… Obviously, I wouldn’t have just driven full speed into the back of him like that,” Byron explained.

Dillon, meanwhile, insisted he had done nothing unusual in his pit entry and said that his spotter, White, had communicated the team’s intentions to Byron’s spotter, Branden Lines.

“Usually, I rely on the spotter to let everybody know, and my spotter said he let (Byron’s) spotter know. I don’t know if it’s a lack of information getting relayed, but that’s a quick amount of time for that to happen. I don’t think I did anything egregious getting on pit road. I hate it for them and hate that it took him out. He was lining up to have a really good day, but I don’t know who that is on or if I could do much different there,” said Dillon.

White maintained that he had indeed attempted to alert Lines. “Brandon is at the other end of the spotter stand towards Turn 1, so I was like, ‘I got to get to Brandon.’ So I hustled down there. I didn’t get to him; I didn’t touch him on the shoulder, turn him around, but I got, I would say, four or five feet from him, couple people down, and he turned and looked at me,” he explained.

“We made eye contact. I pointed to the bottom, twice, and mouthed the words ‘we’re pitting’ — even though I know he can’t hear and he probably can’t read my lips, but I gestured just like I would do any other person that we’re pitting. Obviously, that was misunderstood. He thought we were giving him the bottom, and that was not the case,” said White.

However, Byron’s crew chief, Rudy Fugle, later pushed back on that claim, telling SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “Our spotter didn’t get clear communication and definitely didn’t get that early enough.” 

Now, as Kaulig heads to Talladega with new voices on the spotter end, the echoes of Las Vegas still linger in the air. And the Rick Hendrick camp was not happy.

HMS crew chief lashes out after costly pit road confusion at Vegas

The impact between Byron and Dillon’s cars destroyed both the No. 24 and No. 10 cars and ended Byron’s night with a 36th-place finish and Dillon’s with a 37th-place finish. And all of this stemmed from what appeared to be a communication breakdown.

“I think we just, culture-wise, we all need to do our job of communicating better, but from a driver’s standpoint, there was no hand out the window,” crew chief Rudy Fugle vented on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“He had the opportunity to, running between the leaders, in a really poor position on, running position on track, he had the opportunity to take a really shallow entry and make sure he was out of the way to hit pit road. All those things are possible and should have been done, in my opinion.”

Still, optimism remains within the Hendrick Motorsports camp. Byron’s pace at Las Vegas, including a Stage 1 win, third in Stage 2, and 55 laps led, showed championship-caliber speed. As Kyle Petty put it, “I think that William Byron can recover from this because we’ve seen the Hendrick cars have speed… I have Byron going all the way to Phoenix.”