Everybody expected chaos to appear at Talladega Superspeedway. The racetrack poses an omnipresent threat of the ‘Big One’ due to its immense size and high speeds. However, people got a dose of chaos before Talladega’s turn in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Instead of the 2.66-mile Alabama oval, Sin City’s 1.5-mile intermediate oval became the seat of a spine-chilling crash involving William Byron. And Ty Dillon has a vocal opinion about it.

The South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway marked the Round of 8 opener. The pressure is high among playoff drivers hoping to speed up for a potential championship. And among the solid contenders is William Byron, who is yet to hoist a trophy for Hendrick Motorsports. However, he suffered a huge blow, and Ty Dillon claimed his innocence.

William Byron receives a rebuttal

Well, the No. 24 HMS Chevrolet driver was in brilliant form initially. William Byron won Stage 1 and led 55 laps total during his entire Sunday stint. Although his teammate, Kyle Larson, won stage 2, Byron was able to regain the lead. Then on lap 232, Larson got ahead, and Byron’s pace fell a little bit. Five laps later, Ty Dillon was called to pit road as his lapped car was suffering damage. And Byron apparently did not get the message that Dillon was going to pit road. “I never saw him wave,” Byron recollected after the race. And just like that, the No. 24 plowed into the rear end of Dillon’s No. 10 Chevrolet.

The harrowing crash left people dumbfounded in the grandstands, as the impact was visibly great. William Byron‘s race was over, as he limped to a 36th-place finish. Yet Ty Dillon had no hand in that, as the Kaulig Racing driver refuted Byron’s claims. He said he did wave. Dillon recalled, “Some people stick their hands out, and I do sometimes to let people know if I’m racing hard with somebody. But I feel like William — the part that I wave out is down the backstretch, he was so far back then that I don’t know if he could see or if I didn’t get it out far enough.”

Ty Dillon, who attained fame earlier this year for his In-Season Tournament drill, insisted that he was simply trying to nurse his ill-handling machine to pit road. And he suggested a possible lack of communication: “Usually, I rely on the spotter to let everybody know, and my spotter said he let the 24 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 was looking forward, trying to hit my marks, get as efficient as possible cause you’re still racing for everything out there.”

Nevertheless, as a driver of the same OEM, Ty Dillon felt sad for William Byron. The crash saw the latter drop 15 points below the cut line going into the second race of the Round of 8. So Dillon said, “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.”

In the middle of this Chevrolet ruckus, an innocent Toyota bystander got caught in the mess.

Catching another non-playoff driver

Well, fans were not so happy with William Byron. After leading the race and showing legitimate chances of winning, he bizarrely plowed into Ty Dillon’s car. But while most of the debate wraps the two drivers in this conversation, another rival Cup Series driver was involved. John Hunter Nemechek became collateral damage in this scenario, as the Legacy Motor Club driver also spun out. The No. 42 Toyota driver had started the race from 26th place and fell three spots lower to 29th at the start/finish line. This marked one of Nemechek’s lows in an otherwise encouraging season.

John Hunter Nemechek clinched 2 top fives and 8 top tens earlier this season, marking a significant improvement from his 2024 fortunes. Yet the Las Vegas chaos was hardly the first instance where he was involved in a wreck. Earlier this month at Kansas Speedway, he made contact with Zane Smith’s No. 34 Ford. That sent Smith’s car riding along the outside wall on two wheels before tumbling down the track. Nemechek described the incident, “I was going to go try run three-wide middle and ultimately just didn’t have enough room between Zane’s left rear quarter panel and my right front getting into the corner there. I got tight and then kind of got sucked into his left rear quarter.” He also owned up to it, “Just a mistake on my part.”

This time, however, John Hunter Nemechek is not going to need to own up. With the Las Vegas wreck rattling peers and fans, let’s see how William Byron gets back in form next weekend.