Edwards takes blame for crash

Edwards had been hanging at the back of the pack for most of the day but eventually got in the mix at the front as the race approached its end.

However the Roush Fenway racer misjudged a bump-drafting manoeuvre with Biffle in turn three, turning Biffle's car sideways and igniting the biggest wreck of the day with fifteen laps to go.

"I was just pushing Greg as hard as I could," Edwards said. "It's my fault and I apologize to everybody caught up in that wreck. We had been pushing each other a lot and it had been going really well.

"We just got in exactly the wrong spot there going into three and he got real loose and that was just the way it went. It's my fault.

"I feel bad that I took my teammates out. I know Matt's mad and I'm sure Greg's mad, but you just do the best you can and hope for the best. It just didn't work out today. I was worried about the idiots when you come here and I was the guy that caused that one."

Biffle avoided blaming Edwards for the incident that happened when they had just started working with each other in an effort to move to the front of the field. He said they had already pushed each other while cornering without problem and was thus surprised to suddenly lose control of his car.

"You can't blame Carl," Biffle said. "He was trying to help us and he pushed us all the way to the front down the backstretch. We talked about it last night. We talked about it the night before. We talked about it today as far as what we were going to do and that was our deal - to get teamed up and shove each other all the way to the front.

"We had been able to push around the corner all day and I don't know if I was moving down or he was moving up, but maybe when he came to push a little bit it just instantly slid. I had my foot in the gas and it just spun the tyres and went around and that's all she wrote."

Team owner Jack Roush said NASCAR should prevent drivers from pushing each other into the corners to avoid such incidents, as they will do so as much as they can to try to gain momentum and move up the field.

"NASCAR had set that up by allowing people to push all day," Roush said about the incident. "All day long people pushed in the corners and pushed in the tri-oval and pushed in the straightaway and pushed all the way around the race track.

"It was real clear to me and I think it was clear to everybody, including Carl, that if you weren't willing to push the car in front of you, then you couldn't advance as well as somebody else would that was doing the pushing."

Despite not finishing the race, both Edwards and Biffle maintained second and third place in the standing respectively, although they have both lost ground to points leader Jimmie Johnson. Meanwhile Matt Kenseth remained ninth in the Chase but is 245 points off the lead.