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KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- It was, Elliott Sadler noted, "like Kentucky all over again."
Sadler, driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, won that one.
He didn't win Saturday's caution-filled Kansas Lottery 300 -- he finished second. But he was the highest-finishing XFINITY Series regular, trailing Kyle Busch under the checkered flag.
The race was the first stop in the Round of 8, a trio of races that will determine which four teams will advance to Homestead-Miami Speedway -- in the Championship 4 -- next month to battle for the series title.
Kentucky opened the first round, and "when you start with an even playing field," things can get intense, Sadler said.
The intensity returned for Kansas.
"Everybody wants to get the edge, you want to get the advantage," he said. "That creates hard racing and protecting your real estate and that creates closer racing. When you have closer racing you have mistakes and sometimes a lot of cautions."
Fellow Chase hopeful Daniel Suarez (Joe Gibbs Racing), Joey Logano (Team Penske) and Kyle Larson (Chip Ganassi Racing) completed the top five.
There were 10 cautions and plenty of mistakes on Saturday, which surprisingly wasn't a track record for either. Not all involved were Chase contenders, but enough did to promise the next few weeks will be interesting.
Three Chase drivers, Justin Allgaier, Bubba Wallace and Ryan Reed, were part of a six-car incident on Lap 165 of the 200-lap race. Reed (Roush Fenway Racing) had been battling troubles all day; Wallace, his teammate, had led briefly; Allgaier (JRM) had been solid.
But the incident took Wallace out of the race and Allgaier out of contention.
"I just got run over from behind," Allgaier said. "We were three wide so obviously there was a lot going on behind us, cars getting big runs, and I just kind of got run over."
His car was mangled -- body damage and mechanical issues -- but Allgaier still managed a 15th-place finish.
"I think more than anything, the fact that we rallied back and had a solid finish to what really was a catastrophic day," he said of the end result. "Yeah it's a little frustrating to not be better in points than we are but at the same time we battled through adversity today and lost as few points as we could lose. That's a big plus."
Wallace, 33rd, said his No. 6 team wasn't "knocked out" of the title picture.
"It is just motivation to go to Texas," he said.
"We have all wrecked plenty of times in our careers, so we know how to use it as fuel. This is just a little dent. Nothing to be worried about. We just have to do our job in Texas and Phoenix and make up as much time as we can."
Trouble also found pre-Chase favorite Erik Jones (JGR) and Brendan Gaughan (Richard Childress Racing).
Jones was leading the race when contact from Kyle Larson resulted in damage and a tire issue, sending the winner of four races this year to pit road with less than 15 laps remaining. Jones, a four-time winner this season, even led for 11 circuits.
Jones finished 16th, and if there's a silver lining, it's that he's been here before -- an accident at Kentucky put his No. 20 team in a hole it had to dig itself out of to advance out of the first round.
"We really didn't want to be in that position again," Jones noted afterward. "We were in a good position not to be in that spot but we just got turned there on the restart. It's unfortunate. …
"It's such a shame because we had such a fast car."
The series is off until Nov. 5 at Texas Motor Speedway for the O'Reilly Auto Parts Challenge (3:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Sadler will reside as the points leader at least until then, with Daniel Suarez, Blake Koch, Allgaier and Jones second through fifth, respectively. Only 12 points separate those five.
Reed (-14), Gaughan (-29) and Wallace (-30) complete the top eight.