Kurt Busch was unable to continue after the collisions with Hamlin and Elliott and finished behind the wall in 32nd.

The disappointing end to his day came after a furious rally through the field, in which the elder Busch brother clawed his way back into contention and led 52 laps after a one-lap penalty for passing the pace car on his approach to pit road at lap 135.

“Erik Jones was on my inside when we restarted and I just wanted to make sure I didn’t slip through the new one and two,” explained Busch of the restart where his day met its end. “If I could have been to somebody’s outside off two, then I thought we had a good shot of maintaining the lead and I just got cleaned out. I flat out got cleaned out.

“I thought it was the right decision for us to stay out. I’m not gonna look back on it or second-guess it, though,” Busch added. “If the rule earlier in the race on the pit road of passing the pace car is black and white, I just need to get brushed up on my rulebook. I didn’t gain anything by doing what I did other than just digging from behind all day.”

Busch was looking to advance to the Championship 4 for the first time in what may be his final season with Stewart-Haas Racing and the No. 41 team.

“It was a really good year for our Haas Automation Ford,” he noted. “Thanks to Monster Energy and everybody that put their talent into that 41 car. I just didn’t get the job done to get us to Homestead.”

Then there was Bowyer, who was the first of the playoff contenders to be eliminated on Sunday after a flat left-rear tire on his No. 14 Ford sent him spinning into the outside wall.

Hard contact with the SAFER Barrier put Bowyer out for the afternoon after two wins earlier in the season helped to propel him all the way to the round of eight.

“It’s frustrating; we just cut a left-rear tire down. I don’t know if it’s a product of being able to get down on the back straightaway off the race track like that, but at the end of the day it’s pretty unique,” said Bowyer, who was running seventh when he crashed. “We travel all across the country running on race tracks that we race on the race track and this one, we spend more time off of it. It’s fun to be able to do that, but I don’t know. After I saw the 22 (Joey Logano) and then felt my left-rear tire go, maybe that was a product of that. We’ve run low air on these short tracks like this on our left sides and maybe that was it.

“This was just the way our playoffs went from the start,” Bowyer added. “We’ve had a great year getting to where we were part of this playoff situation and being in contention to be able to run for a championship. There’s a lot of pride with Mike (Bugarewicz, crew chief) and all the guys on the 14 car. It’s been a lot of fun to go to battle each and every week all across the country with these guys. I can’t say enough about the job the men and women have done at Stewart-Haas to get all four cars in the playoffs. I’m proud of our season and just bummed for our day. You never want to be a caution.”

Along with race winner Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick made the Championship 4 at the end of Sunday’s 500-kilometer race.