RELATED: Full race results
A late-race battle for the lead transformed into an 11-car melee in Sunday's rain-plagued NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, ending Kurt Busch's historic streak of lead-lap finishes at 22.
Busch was battling for the lead just after a Lap 372 restart when his Stewart-Haas Racing No. 41 Chevrolet pitched loose out of Turn 2 on the .533-mile track. His car collected Brad Keselowski's Team Penske No. 2 Ford, sending the front-runners scrambling behind them.
Austin Dillon, Matt Kenseth, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Chase Elliott, Paul Menard, Kyle Larson, Brian Scott and Jimmie Johnson were the other drivers listed as involved in the ninth caution period of the rain-delayed Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race. Of those, Dillon, Logano and Johnson drove away with only minor damage to salvage top-10 finishes.
Busch wound up completing 372 of the 500 laps Sunday, sidelined by a DNF for the first time this season. He said that he misjudged the sticky rosin applied to the low side of the turns, triggering the pile-up.
"I think I just missed the bottom groove by a few inches, got loose and the wreck was on," said Busch, who ended up in 38th place. "The way that our car was restarting it felt comfortable, it felt good. That inside with the rosin and the VHT (traction compound) if you don't hit it exactly right, you lose a lot of time. I tried to make up for it and got loose. I feel really bad for the Monster Energy guys. We had a win in our sights and I just drove the car at 101 percent instead of that 99."
Keselowski, who finished 33rd, said he had little room to escape.
"He got loose and by the time I saw it, I was already making contact with him," Keselowski said. "It was kind of one of those Bristol things. I hate it because we were making improvements on the car and we had gotten up to third there and the race was kind of coming to us."
Kenseth, a four-time winner at Bristol, now has three consecutive finishes at the .533-mile track of 35th or worse. His Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota was nudged into a spin by Elliott then sideswiped by fellow rookie Blaney.
"I didn't really see what happened except for there were cars wrecking up there and I slowed down as much as the guy in front of me," Kenseth said. "I couldn't slow down any less than that or I would hit him. Chase busted out of nowhere, ran me over and the 21 (Blaney) came through there wide open -- I still don't know if he's lifted yet or not -- and finished us off. As the wreck happened, you've got to slow down. Just not much I could do."