Jamie McMurray, Tony Stewart have problems at Loudon

Two of the bigger stories in the aftermath of today's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 were the three-car incident between Jamie McMurray, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and David Ragan, and the frustrating finish to what had been a dominating day for Tony Stewart.

McMurray ran into the back of Earnhardt near the entrance of pit road on Lap 272, causing the Roush Fenway Racing driver to then hit the front stretch wall and enter the path of Ragan, whose No. 6 machine got sideswiped as a result. The crash took McMurray and teammate Ragan out of the race, while Earnhardt battled to finish 25th.

When McMurray was asked about the incident, he felt that a spotter error came into play.

"I guess [Earnhardt] was pitting, but typically when a guy pits, the spotter will say something, either theirs to yours or whatnot," he said. "I was just trying to get underneath [Patrick Carpentier]. I'd been running on the apron all day and I was really focused on looking at the outsiden and seeing where he was and I never saw [Earnhardt]. I never saw [Earnhardt] until I hit him."

Ragan said that he had no idea what caused the wreck between the two drivers.

"I saw [McMurray] and thought he was gonna hit the wall and thought I could go between them," he said. "I probably slowed down a little too much. Like I said, I don't know why they wrecked."

Meanwhile, Stewart was forced to swallow another hard luck outing after leading 132 laps on the day, all the way to the final pit stops. After taking two tires, he came off pit road in 14th position and wound up 13th when the final yellow of the day came out on Lap 281 for an incident involving Clint Bowyer and Sam Hornish Jr.

Shortly after, the rains came and sealed the win for Kurt Busch, who stayed out on track during the next-to-last caution on Lap 271.

"I don't know how to put it into words right now," he said. "Everybody's worked hard. It's not for a lack of effort by anybody on this Home Depot racing team by any means. It's just one of those years where everything that can go wrong goes wrong. We've had years where we couldn't do anything wrong, too."

"Smoke" took solace, however, in knowing that another chance to prove himself is but a short time away.

"It's part of racing. The good thing is no matter what the outcome is today, we get to do it again in six more days, so we just do what we can."