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Busch, whose 21st-place finish was lowest of the Chase contenders, took time after the race to change out of his firesuit before speaking to reporters. By then he had cooled off.
"Whatever. It's just really unfortunate," Busch said. "The guy was loose, said it on the radio, he slid up off the bottom and I got into him unintentionally and just spun him out. My fault, 100 percent. But then the retaliation? For a guy that's in the Chase, that's racing for something ... he'll be here next year. He could have wrecked me in any of the first 26 races next year. That would have been fine.
"It's just hard to swallow something, a day like today, where we had a top-five car going."
Busch dropped from third to seventh in the standings and is 80 points behind Johnson.
Reutimann didn't admit that he intentionally wrecked Busch, but had no guilt for tangling with a championship contender.
"You guys can sugarcoat it all the time, but he wrecked me," Reutimann said. "You can tell me how bad he wants it, how hard he drives, how much he wants it above everybody else. That's all fine. I don't care if you're in the Chase or not. You need to think about who you're running over when you're running over them.
"If you're in the Chase, you have as much responsibility to drive with respect as I do, or anybody else."
The Busch-Reutimann incident was the extent of the on-track drama. Everything else was relegated to decent racing in an event that sailed by: The race finished in a record 2 hours, 54 minutes, and the five cautions were the fewest in track history.
Twelve different drivers led laps, including Jeff Gordon, who led a race-high 76 before finishing fifth. But once Biffle got out front, nobody had anything for his Ford, and he beat Johnson by nearly eight seconds.
He opened the day ninth in the standings, 140 points behind the leader. Then he won his second race of the season and cut the number nearly in half: He moved up one spot to eighth and is just 85 points behind Johnson.
"We want to win these races. We want to have the trophies," Biffle said. "They've been talking about all the other guys, so we'll give them something to talk about for the next couple weeks."
[Associated Press;
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