The two drivers were battling for a position inside the top five when contact was made. Larson spun and crashed heavily at the entrance to pit lane. He was uninjured, but the accident forced NASCAR to bring cars up pit road in the wrong direction after the race.

Allmendinger would finish fourth while Larson was 29th, unable to continue after the impact.

“I turned him. Not on purpose," the JTG Daugherty Racing driver admitted rather bluntly.

"The No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) started to spin and Kyle and I were racing for fifth there. He defended on the inside, which he should have. And I tried to cut under him off of the last corner and the No. 78 was coming back across the race track. I was under him. He turned. And I just clipped him.

"I’m just not very happy with myself on that. I don’t want to do that, especially for fourth place. And he did a great job. It’s on me. I never meant to do it. It’s not going to help the case. I know he’s going to be pissed off and he should be pissed off. I’d be."

Larson warns of payback

Larson is on the fringe of the Chase and the incident cost him 25 championship points. That could easily be the difference in making the postseason or missing out come Richmond.

"He is always aggressive, (but) I figured he would be smart," said Larson. "Obviously, the No. 78 was spinning in front of us. That is a free spot for both of us and he just dumped me. He had already ran me down to the front stretch wall once with about 15 to go or so. Pretty dumb move right there too, but I was the smarter one racing for points, lifted, could have wrecked him, but didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know.

"He wrecked me earlier in the year at Vegas. He has run me hard, but we always race pretty well, but today was flat out stupid. I love his crew chief (Randall Burnett) to death; he was our engineer last year.

"It just sucks they are going to have to start building some more race cars because he has got a few coming.”