At the 2025 South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, William Byron seemed to have found his groove. Running inside the top five for a good portion of the race, the regular-season champion was inches away from shutting his rough playoff stretch. It meant Hendrick Motorsports wasn’t ready to be written off yet.

But in the closing laps, things took a dramatic turn. The 27-year-old HMS driver went on to collide with Ty Dillon, who was off-sequence with the pit cycle and slowed unexpectedly to enter pit road. Byron, not anticipating the move, crashed into the rear of Dillon’s car, ending his race and resulting in a 36th-place finish. There was one single reason behind the mishap: improper communication.

“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,” Rudy Fugle, crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports, didn’t hold back in a Sirius XM interview. “There are a lot of people that will be busy, and they’ll do a swerve low on the back stretch, which usually means I am coming to the pit road.

“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.”

Considering Dillon was laps down, it was clear he wasn’t competing for position. It was only right for the pit crew and the Kaulig Racing’s driver to become extra cautious so as to not interfere with the leaders. But there was an evident lack of it. After drifting up the track, not only did Dillon slow down abruptly, but he also failed to signal his pit entry with a hand out the window– a safety staple for decades.

Dillon later reasoned that he believed his spotter had already communicated his pit entry to Byron’s. According to Fugle, though, it wasn’t clear and neither had it arrived early enough. A simple waving gesture by Dillon could have eased concerns in such a situation.

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Now, while Byron and HMS avoided anything serious themselves, the situation has landed them in a ditch a little too difficult to pull out of. The regular season champion is now down to -15 points, making the next two weekends at Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway an uphill battle. But there’s no turning back for this team.

After a poor finish last season, despite starting with success at Daytona 500 and Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has led analysts to rule them out of championship race. Moreover, entering the round of 8, Byron had hardly managed to finish in the top 10 while leading zero laps.

The potential top-5 finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was the first positive sign, warranting Rick Hendrick team’s frustration. But all hope is not lost.

Byron’s Stage 1 win, third in Stage 2, and 55 laps led showed his speed before Dillon’s blunder tanked him to 36th. Kyle Petty is even betting on Byron’s title odds. “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,” he says.

Byron’s 15-point deficit to the Championship 4 isn’t fatal; Talladega’s chaos favors comebacks, and Hendrick’s speed at Martinsville gives him a shot.