KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Half of the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff grid was mangled in a first-lap crash during Saturday’s Kansas Lottery 300 at Kansas Speedway.

As the field stormed into the first two corners, Justin Allgaier’s No. 7 Chevrolet got loose and washed up the race track in the apex of the turn, clipping Christopher Bell’s No. 20 Toyota as Allgaier tried to save his machine. The resulting contact triggered a nine-car accident that wiped out four title contenders.

In addition to Bell and Allgaier, Austin Cindric and Cole Custer sustained heavy damage in the chaos, with Cindric’s machine getting all four wheels off the ground after hits from Michael Annett and Ryan Truex.

All drivers involved were uninjured, but the carnage was such that Bell, Allgaier and Cindric all took their cars to the garage and were unable to continue.

Allgaier immediately took responsibility for the crash after being checked and released from the infield care center.

“I just got loose,” Allgaier lamented. “I hate it for everybody that we took out. It’s lap one, so a mistake like that is uncalled for. That one’s on me.

“I’m super disappointed for this team because our car was really good this weekend and now, not only is our day wrecked, but a lot of others’ days are wrecked too. Hopefully we can go to Texas in two weeks and bounce back, because we’re going to need to.”

Bell, a six-time winner this season who was the top seed entering the second round of the playoffs, was frustrated because there was nothing he could do before his car was sent around and into the wall.

“I didn’t really see much of anything; I was just driving around there and got clipped,” Bell noted. “I’m just heartbroken, man. This is one of my favorite race tracks we go to, and especially after the run I had last year, this is the race that I was looking forward to whenever we started the year back in February.

“Our Rheem Camry was fast throughout practice and we qualified second, so felt like we were going to be able to contend for the win, but this is actually is not the first time I’ve been out on the first lap,” he continued. “We’ll try and make up for it at Texas. We still have a lot of race tracks that I can win races at, so hopefully we’ll move on from here and rebound.”

The crash drastically shuffled the point picture, with Bell and Allgaier falling from first and second in points entering the afternoon to fourth and sixth, respectively, as the rest of the field ran during the first stage.

Meanwhile, Cindric – who came into Kansas last among the eight playoff contenders – saw the first-lap shunt put him into a must-win situation. He unofficially sits 43 points back of the cutoff line with two playoff races to go before the season finale at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.

“To be 43 points back is a pretty big hole, but I’m thankful to be in safe cars and thankful to the NASCAR medical staff, because that was a pretty big hit,” said Cindric. “It was certainly bigger than I was expecting, but it’s unfortunate … just a racing deal. You don’t really expect something that big to happen in front of you on the first lap. It looked like the 7 (Allgaier) got loose into the 20 (Bell) and we got collected. It’s just unfortunate that it happened that early.

“Obviously this has huge points implications on my end and the owners championship end,” he added. “I just have to put my head down the next couple weeks and figure it out.”

On the flip side, Bell’s accumulation of more than 30 playoff points has him in a position to still be above the cutoff line heading to Texas Motor Speedway in two weeks’ time.

“That’s the beauty of this format. NASCAR’s done such a great job at giving us something to race for during the regular season,” he noted. “We’ve done our job winning six races this year, so we’ve accumulated some bonus points, so hopefully that can carry us through this bad stretch here and maybe we can find ourselves in victory lane later on in this round.

“If not, hopefully the bonus points will get us there.”

Custer was able to continue in the race, despite lacking power steering, but fell multiple laps down.