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CONCORD, N.C. -- An incident-filled Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway saw Chase Elliott lead the Hendrick Motorsports teammates to the checkered flag.

In addition to the rookie's third top-five finish in the past four races, there was plenty to take away from the event.

TALLADEGA GETS 'WILD'

When there are multiple incidents that involve more than a dozen competitors, it's safe to say a race was a bit chaotic.

Chase Elliott -- who navigated the chaos for a top-five finish -- said his main goal for the day was "just trying to finish."

"You can't have a good day unless you finish -- just trying to focus in on that," he said. "Obviously it got a little wild. For us, we just tried to keep that in mind and make it to the end."

Kasey Kahne said the early portions of the race was as "wide-open" as he can remember, as competitors were able to stay on the throttle.

“Guys were being aggressive and it felt like it was late in the race the whole race," he said. "It was pretty wild how all that went down, but we had a good car. It was going to be a strong race if we just stayed out of trouble.”

Unfortunately for Kahne, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, they weren't able to avoid the trouble.

But Johnson wasn't surprised the way the race unfolded.

“It’s Talladega, plate racing," he said. "It really just came down to aggression from behind the wheel -- from everything that I saw it created all the madness.”


TEAMMATES GATHERED UP

The first incident involving Hendrick Motorsports teammates sent both Earnhardt and Kahne to the garage.

"I got in a bad area with the wind and the air and it just got loose and spun out," Earnhardt explained. "The same thing that happened at Daytona to us."

From the view of Kahne, who was racing behind his teammate, there was nowhere to go.

“I saw the No. 88 went left and then he came back right spinning in front of me," he said. "We were done at that point, but we had a great Farmers Insurance Chevrolet. I felt really fast."

While both drivers were able to return to the track, both were also involved in incidents later in the race.

"We were just trying to finish -- we had a lot of damage," Kahne said. "Ended up losing it."

Earnhardt, meanwhile, was hit by another competitor who experienced an issue with his car.

"We were just out there riding around and something broke on the No. 19 and he came over and got into us," he recalled.

"We just had no luck this weekend.”


'AGGRESSION' AFFECTS JOHNSON

Johnson, who spoke of the aggression behind the wheel throughout the field that helped create the racing conditions Sunday afternoon, said that aggression helped lead to the incident that sent him in for repairs.

Down the stretch, Johnson was being bump drafted by a competitor and it ended up sending him toward the wall.

"That was aggressive there," he said. "He got me coming out of the tri-oval. He got me going in and through and I was trying to stay on top of it and finally he got me once too hard and off I went.”