Tony Stewart won a wild Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night!

Stewart dominated the race, but after a restart with 4 laps to go, Kyle Busch took the lead on the outside. With a push from Jimmie Johnson, Stewart chased Busch down and was ready to challenge for the lead when the melee ensued. Busch took a hard hit in the wall ending his chance of winning @ Daytona.

Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR

“It doesn’t matter who it is, you just don’t want a race to be decided like that,” Stewart about the finish. “You know, it’s just a bad situation. It’s not bad because we’re put in a bad position.  It just is what it is.  I guess I just don’t feel as much gratification from winning this race as I probably should, I guess, just because I don’t like the way the outcome happened.  I don’t like  if we didn’t win the race, we didn’t earn it.  But I don’t want any part of earning a race because the guy that was leading the race got wrecked. I don’t know that we did anything wrong.  I mean, I’ve seen replays of it, and he’s protecting his position, which he’s got to do.  I mean, that’s what he has to do as a driver.  He can’t just sit there and let us make a move like that and not try to defend it.  But it puts him, it puts us, it put Kasey Kahne behind him in a bad position where it drove Kyle’s car all the way up to Kasey’s windshield. It’s a product of the racing.”

Kyle Busch slid sideways across the finish and was scored with a 14th place finish. After climbing out of his wrecked car, four safety crew members had to force him into their vehicle to go to the infield care center. “I think he’s got a little bit of a headache, but hopefully he’s going to be OK,” team owner Joe Gibbs told the media. “It’s a tough place to race.” Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington said, “It’s a big disappointment. We sat there, was patient all night long. We were just fine. We were in position to go for the win and we end up wrecked. What are you going to say?” Busch left the track refusing to comment. In the Daytona 500, Busch led a race-high 88 laps before getting caught up in a late race wreck.

Stewart, who started from the pole, lead early and often. He led nine times for a race-high 86 laps. The victory was Stewart’s third @ Daytona in the past 5 years. It’s his second of the season, second as an owner/driver and the 35th of his Cup Series career. He said he’d like to talk to Kyle about the finish. “I don’t know at what point this week,” Stewart said. “It probably won’t be tomorrow since tomorrow is kind of an off day and all of us cherish having a Sunday off like this, but that is important to me.  It is important to talk to him about it.  His opinion matters to me.  So yeah, it will happen.  I mean, I’ll have that conversation, I just don’t know when it’ll be.”

Jimmie Johnson held on for a runner-up finish. “There is nothing to do to stop it,” Johnson said about the finish. “Over time we’ve all understood that you can be really aggressive blocking.  And that time  it just didn’t work for the 18. The guys are racing.  Tony didn’t mean to dump him.  Same thing with Talladega.  It’s just the product of restrictor plate racing.  Every time we use the restrictor plate tracks there’s questions about how we can keep from having the big wreck and things like that, and you just can’t.  When you run plates and we run wide open all the way around the track, situations like this come around.”

Denny Hamlin seemed like the only one that had something for Stewart. Hamlin led 63 laps and raced in the front throughout the night. After giving his JGR teammate, Kyle Busch that big push for him to take the lead, Hamlin was able to avoid the crash and go home 3rd. “We had a solid car,” Hamlin said. ” I felt like me and the 14 were class of the field pretty much all day with the 18, 48 and 99 kind of sprinkled in there a little bit.  You know, just it was tough at the end of the race right there.  I knew it was going to be all about positioning and where you put yourself, and I felt good about being on the outside right there on that restart with about five to go. But I knew that my help from the 48 was going to be limited.  I knew he was going to dump me just as soon as he could.  He wasn’t going to help push me past the 14 for sure. We just got in a situation there where I didn’t get the help and then I had to make a decision once I got to the 18, and him and the 14 beside each other.  I had to make a decision there and just decided to go with the 18.  The best chance for one of our cars to win was for me to push the 18 on the last lap. Usually when you lead in the last lap your percentile for winning usually is pretty good.  But I’ll tell you, those two cars behind them really got a good suck up on them coming to the checkered, and it’s just like Talladega, when you’ve got new tires and guys are one blocking and one being aggressive, you’re going to have contact, and that’s what happened.”

For the (unofficial) race results, click here.

It was a crash filled night with the race slowed for 30 laps by 8 cautions. The first “Big One” happened on lap 77  and involved 13 drivers: Clint Bowyer, Dale Earnhardt Jr, David Gilliland, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Brad Keselowski, Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman, Reed Sorenson,David Stremme, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers.

There were 23 lead changes 10 drivers:

T. Stewart 0; J. Gordon 1; T. Stewart 2; Kurt Busch 3; D. Hamlin 4-14; T. Stewart 15-31; D. Hamlin 32-45; T. Stewart 46; D. Hamlin 47;  T. Stewart 48-58; R. Newman 59; M. Kenseth 60-62; D. Hamlin 63-71; T. Stewart 72; D. Hamlin 73-79; J. Andretti 80; T. Stewart 81-82; D. Hamlin 83-103; R. Gordon 104; T. Stewart 105-126; J. Burton 127-128; T. Stewart 129-158; Kyle Busch 159; T. Stewart 160

Tony Stewart has extended his lead in the standings to 180 points over Jeff Gordon.