DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Tony Stewart nailed his thoughts on the likelihood of winning the Pepsi 400 for the third consecutive time little more than 24 hours before his tangle with a teammate while they ran first and second cost him a shot at NASCAR legend David Pearson's Daytona record.

Stewart had won Daytona's mid-summer race the past two years, and started Saturday night's event from the sixth position.

"It'd be really cool, obviously, to be able to [win three in a row] -- but winning one is hard, winning two is very difficult and winning three in a row is much more difficult than that," Stewart said following his qualifying lap late Friday afternoon. "We just got to take it one lap at a time [Saturday] night."

But on only the 15th of 160 laps at Daytona International Speedway, according to his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin, Stewart drafted up behind Hamlin's car in Turn 4 and hit it, at least once, which created a wild, smoky melee that involved virtually the entire field and sent the teammates to the garage area (watch video).

"I'm not sure [what happened]," Hamlin said. "I didn't get to see it but I definitely felt a tap from behind. The cars were starting to lose their handle there and I don't know -- I was just trying to hang on.

"It's just one of those things -- it's superspeedway racing. I was holding it wide-open every single lap and that one in particular I didn't get off the corner as good as what I had before -- but everyone's got to be aware that stuff can happen and it definitely did."

Team owner Joe Gibbs, the coach of the NFL's Washington Redskins who tries to make as many races as he can throughout the summer, said the incident, and its aftermath, was a clash of two intense competitors.

"The two guys are very competitive, we're running up front and we've got real good cars and that's something that can happen," Gibbs said after visiting the garage with his son, team president J.D. Gibbs. "That's really what happened -- it's just one of those unfortunate things.

"Both guys are going as hard as they can and I think both of these guys are real competitive. I think they're good teammates and I think it's just something that happened [Saturday night]."

Gibbs said he had neither seen the crash, which occurred while he was in one of his team's pit areas, nor heard Stewart's comments on his in-car radio and the live radio broadcast.

Stewart said Hamlin had "tried to crash us on Friday in practice and didn't get it done so he finished it off [Saturday]."

"I talked to Tony," Gibbs said. "And he didn't say any [criticism of Hamlin] to me."

Gibbs also said, as far as he could tell, impatience didn't play a part in the crash.

"I think we were up front and that's where you wanted to be," Gibbs said. "We wanted to be up front and stay away from everything, and it was just unfortunate it wound up being us. We were probably in as good a position as we could be in.

"Both guys are frustrated and I'm sure Denny feels bad it got away from him, there. It's a shame because we had two good cars. It's a competitive sport and when you've got good stuff and you're up front, it can happen. I hate it, but it did. It was just a racing incident, really."

Hamlin agreed.

"It's what happens at this racetrack," Hamlin said. "It really doesn't matter either way, who it is, whether it's him or somebody else -- but I hope he don't try to blame it on me."

That's exactly what happened. The incident began when Stewart, running second behind Hamlin, drove his No. 20 Chevrolet up behind Hamlin's No. 11 as the field exited Turn 4. (Continued)