RELATED: Keselowski wins chaos-filled race at Talladega | Full race results
“The Big One” came with 28 laps to go in the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway when Kurt Busch‘s No. 41 car hooked the bumper of the No. 48 of Jimmie Johnson to send it spinning into the outside wall, tangling 21 cars in the impact by the time the pileup was totaled.
“The No. 41 (of Kurt Busch) was bump drafting me and caused that wreck and just kept hitting me and finally ended up taking me out in the process,” Johnson said. ” … He got me coming out of the tri-oval. He got me going in and through and I was trying to stay on top of it and finally he got me once too hard and off I went.”
Johnson was running in fifth place at the time of the incident.
The full list of cars involved in the accident included: No. 78 Martin Truex Jr., No. 3 Austin Dillon, No. 47 AJ Allmendinger, No. 1 Jamie McMurray, No. 95 Michael McDowell, No. 7 Regan Smith, No. 42 Kyle Larson, No. 48 Johnson, No. 27 Paul Menard, No. 31 Ryan Newman, No. 44 Brian Scott, No. 35 David Gilliland, No. 10 Danica Patrick, No. 41 Busch, No. 18 Kyle Busch, No. 38 Landon Cassill, No. 43 Aric Almirola, No. 21 Ryan Blaney, No. 16 Greg Biffle, No. 11 Denny Hamlin and No. 17 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
“There was a lot of hard racing and people being aggressive,” Blaney said. “I don’t know what caused that. A little of it might have been the weather threat. I think early in the race for sure. With 40 or 50 to go they said there might be some more weather so that might have played a role in it.”
RELATED: Kenseth, Patrick crash hard in final laps at Talladega
Brad Keselowski‘s No. 2 was leading at the time of the wreck, and escaped the pileup as collisions took place behind him — and Kes would go on to win the race.
RELATED: Closer look at ‘The Big One’ | Updated standings