On the 172nd lap of the Alabama 500, a major collision occurred at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday in the penultimate race of the quarterfinal round of 12.

Talladega Crash NASCAR Playoffs video

The crash involved 16 cars and happened with 17 laps left when No. 78 Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. and David Ragan seemed to slightly touch each other. Ragan, the No. 38 Ford driver, was briefly pulled to the right of the track before veering left and spinning Kurt Busch in the middle of the group of vehicles. Busch then slammed into the wall and flames went up on the 2.66-mile track as the race was stopped for the crash that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch were also involved with.

Ryan Blaney (18th), Jimmie Johnson (24th), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (26th) and Kyle Busch (27th) missed opportunities to put themselves in relatively safe positions heading into the last race before the semifinals.

They’re all competing for NASCAR playoff spots at Kansas, where four drivers will be eliminated. Ninth-place Busch is at the cutoff. Among those currently joining Busch on the outside are Matt Kenseth, (eight points behind Johnson), Stenhouse (22 points behind) and Jamie McMurray (29 points back).

Busch has finishes of 29th and 27th in the two playoff races this round, so his 41 playoff points maintain him in contention but are not a guarantee to advance past the quarterfinals.

“I don’t know,” Busch said. “We threw away a lot of it last week. If we would have finished last week normal, we would have been fine. … We’ll have to go to Kansas and run good in all the stages and have a good day there to try to make it through.”


According to ESPN, Sunday’s crash occurred because of a miscommunication. Johnson’s spotter heard NASCAR tell the drivers to start their engines, so he told his team to begin working on the car. However, the team was discovered to have worked on the car before the red flag was lifted.

Johnson was scored like all the other cars that couldn’t continue following the wreck — by position of the last completed lap.

“Those points are so valuable,” Johnson said in unsuccessful lobbying for a ruling that he be credited with finishing ahead of any car that was stopped on the track and couldn’t continue.

TALLADEGA, AL – OCTOBER 15: Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M&M’s Caramel Toyota, and Jimmie Johnson, driver of the #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, are involved in an on-track incident during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on October 15, 2017 in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Getty Images)

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