With 22 laps to go, the pack charged off into Turn 1 with Daniel Suarez and Denny Hamlin vying for the race lead.
Moments later, they and several other drivers lost traction and crashed in a massive incident that collected most of the lead lap cars.
The roughly 20-car wreck was a track blocker, and few drivers escaped unscathed. The first among them was Austin Dillon, who now leads. The race was quickly red-flagged as the rain came down even harder, stopping the cars on pit road just after 12:30 p.m. ET.
Chase Elliott, Aric Almirola, Daniel Hemric, Chris Buescher, Justin Haley, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., as well as Hamlin and Suarez have all been checked and released from the infield care center.
A handful of other cars have yet to exit the race, but did sustain significant damage in the carnage.
Among them was Kevin Harvick, who sits second under the red flag, but likely won't be able to continue should the race resume. While most others were focused on the rain, he was more concerned with his position on track.
"I saw the bottom two cars starting to come back up the race track so I gassed it up, but so close," he told the broadcast.
"But the (No. 4) car maintained plenty of speed. You can see it come out of there and so I guess you have to be subjected to what is minimum speed, because when the caution comes out, we are the leader -- when the light comes on."
He then added, in regards to NASCAR officiating: "Well, I think they're making it up as they go."
NASCAR defended their decision-making process. When asked if they should have done something differently, Vice President of Competition Scott Miller didn't think so.
"Well, I really don't," he said with conviction. "We were on top of the weather, monitoring it with all of our corner spotters in the turns, in touch with the spotters up top, and the pace car, and we had all the information that we thought. We'd been dodging a little bit of weather obviously for a little while. Nothing had hit. And you know, all of a sudden there was that shower that I guess the pace car was sitting down there on the inside. It was still dry when they wrecked and if you watch the in-car, you could see that some rain definitely started right before they wreck but we really couldn't do anything about that. And it was not something that you can predict when it's going to start raining. Just a super bad situation for everybody."
With it being such a pivotal race, NASCAR added that it is their responsibility to do everything they can to get the remaining laps in. The race has been stopped for over two hours, at the writing of this story.
Drivers frustrated over NASCAR's late-call on the rain
Several drivers were outspoken about the decision to not call a caution soon enough for rain, reminiscent of what happened at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2021, albeit on a much smaller scale in terms of the wreck that followed.
“Just throw the caution before the rain came," Hamlin said afterwards, visibly annoyed. "We had rain down the front. So about 10 seconds before we got into turn one, it was raining. I’m sure the fans felt it and then they watched us all pile in there.”
He called for "better officiating," and mentioned the 2021 incident at NHMS.
Suarez, who entered the corner side-by-side with Hamlin, said: "We knew the rain was coming. It was raining next door. It was just a matter of time. Why would we wait for that? I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little biased because I was in the front, but there’s nothing you can do. Sometimes you are running 200 mph and you’re able to turn left. And then you see a few drops hard and you’re just spinning.”
He believes that there's no excuse for not knowing the pack was driving into the rain. “I feel like they have a lot of technology to know that the rain is very, very close. I don’t think it’s hard to not put us in that position."
Haley, who was hoping to win his way into the playoffs, echoed Hamlin's comments. "Yeah, it was raining for a good lap before we got into turn one my spotter said. Coming out of (turn) two the previous lap, it was raining and we just lost traction. It’s pretty unacceptable."
Buescher was in the same position as Haley, aware that only a win would put the RFK Racing driver into the playoffs.
“We saw rain," he said during the red flag. "Our Fifth Third Bank Mustang was really fast. Everybody did their jobs and I felt like I was doing mine fairly well up there and had a run. We were definitely in a good spot and it was raining when we got to turn one and we all wiped out. We wiped out all the lead cars, so whoever wins this race wasn’t even in contention. It’s just ridiculous from my point of view.”
