The big one at Talladega brought out a 27-minute red flag for an 18-car wreck that sent Chase Elliott sliding sideways and above several cars and AJ Allmendinger onto his roof and stuck upside down. Fortunately all drivers involved were checked and released from the infield care center.

At least 16 machines were damaged in this one.

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Allmendinger was pushing Elliott down the backstretch with 19 laps to go when he glanced a bit left and got loose, sending Elliott into a spin that collected Joey Logano, Danica Patrick (who had a hard impact against the inside wall), Erik Jones, Matt Kenseth, Trevor Bayne, Michael McDowell, Austin Dillon, Ty Dillon, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Gray Gaulding, David Ragain, Cole Whitt, Kurt Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Corey LaJoe.

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“Battling for the lead, you know,” Allmendinger told Fox Sports. “The 18 and 24 were leading the two packs and the 4 was just on me, and once I got to Chase, I got loose, I barely tapped him, and I tried to get off him and by that point it was too late. It’s just one of those things battling for the lead. The plan kinda went, we waited at the back, and started moving forward there, and the way pit cycles worked we were up front and had a great restart, had the right guys pushing me.

“Hated that that happened. It’s Talladega. I’m not a big fan of it, but you’re up front and got a chance to go for it … Racing happens I guess here.”

“[AJ] just apologized,” Elliott told Fox Sports. “I don’t know that it was really his fault, per say. I think he had a big run and he kinda got to my bumper and just happened to be at a bad spot, kinda coming up off the corner and was skewed to my left rear, and when that happens it just unloads these cars too much.”

Patrick, who also had a hard inside wall impact during the Daytona 500, said she couldn’t see and was following her spotter’s advice to go low when she was hit.

“Everyone knows how these races go at the end,” Patrick said. “We had all the cars left, pretty much no accidents, and everybody was driving really reasonable. I thought everyone was driving hard but not stupid and so everything was pretty good until the end.”