DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Aggressive driving with 76 laps left in the Daytona 500 and rain threatening to cut the event short caused a 10-car backstretch melee that eliminated Kyle Busch's dominant car and radically changed the race's complexion.

It also kicked off a spate of two more cautions in the 20 additional laps that were run before rain ended the race after 152 laps. But the big crash was the most decisive.

The critical accident started after a Lap 124 restart when Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 Chevrolet, a lap down after a pit road penalty, got a great run down the inside and attempted to pass Brian Vickers' No. 83 Toyota.

Apparently Earnhardt didn't know Vickers was also a lap down and fighting him for the free pass spot in the event of another caution. Vickers moved over a lane to block Earnhardt, forcing the No. 88 below the double-yellow out-of-bounds line halfway down the straightaway.

When Earnhardt came back onto the racetrack, he hooked the left-rear corner of Vickers' car, sending it out of control and across the backstretch in front of traffic (watch video).

Earnhardt escaped unscathed and got his lap back. But Busch, whose No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led the most laps in the race (88) and who said he was "100 percent confident" he was going to win, was eliminated on the spot -- as was Vickers. Both pointed fingers at Earnhardt.

"My goal was to keep Junior [Earnhardt] behind me and I went to block him," Vickers said. "I beat him to the yellow line and then he just turned us. He hooked me in the left-rear and typically NASCAR penalizes ... I think [Jason Leffler] was penalized five laps [Saturday] for doing the same thing.

"I guess they're not going to penalize him for it. It's kind of sad. To wreck somebody intentionally like that in front of the entire field is really kind of dangerous. That's my biggest problem with it, but apparently he wanted a caution pretty bad." (Continued)