NASCAR 2016 results: Full finishing order at Bristol Motor Speedway

In an eventful race hampered by weather, Kevin Harvick won the rain-delayed Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race on Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Harvick passed Denny Hamlin for the lead with 70 laps remaining, then outran the field to win for the second time in 2016. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished second, Hamlin third, Austin Dillon fourth and Chris Buescher fifth.

“We should have won a lot of races this year, but we just had things not go our way,” Harvick said. “We made mistakes, or whatever the case may be.”

Harvick celebrated by encouraging car owner and teammate Tony Stewart to perform a burnout alongside him on the frontstretch. Stewart, a three-time Cup Series champion, is retiring following the end of the season, and Sunday marked his final start at the Tennessee track.

“That was pretty neat to be able to win a race and convince him to actually come out on the front straightaway and do a burnout,” Harvick said. “Hopefully that was pretty cool for the fans, and to see him happy and smiling and having fun and doing the burnout was pretty cool.”

The race was delayed a day due to rain and lightning, and when inclement weather pushed back the rescheduled start time three hours on Sunday, there were concerns about getting the entire 500-lap event in. But with the exception of a brief shower that necessitated a seven-minute stoppage 66 laps shy of the finish, the race went from beginning to end without interruption.

As often occurs on the half-mile, high speed oval where drivers can have little time to react, several contenders were swept into various multi-car accidents.

The first race-changing crash saw Kyle Busch, who led 254 of the first 305 laps, spin when a rear suspension part broke. With the defending Sprint Cup champion sideways on the track, Justin Allgaier couldn’t slow down enough to avoid Busch’s prone car and made heavy contact with the front end. Allgaier then veered into Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Larson. Truex and Larson were able make repairs and continue, while Busch and Allgaier suffered irreparable damage.

“The last few times we’ve been here we’ve had real fast Camrys and we haven’t been able to finish -- we’ve been having parts failures here,” Busch said. “It’s something we have to address and fix. I’m tired of losing races here with parts falling apart.”

Busch also blamed Allgaier and his spotter for not being more cautious.

“The person that’s really the biggest moron out there is the spotter of the 46 and the driver of the 46,” Busch said. “I’ve been wrecking for half a lap and they just come on through and clean us out. That’s stupid. So, I don’t know -- frustrating day. Let’s go home.”

With Busch sidelined, that gave the lead to his older brother, Kurt. But that proved to be short-lived, as Kurt crashed just 15 laps later.

As he was leading with Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski directly behind, Busch got loose and made slight contact with Logano, which sent him spinning. Keselowski couldn’t avoid Busch and slammed into him, while Matt Kenseth, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and others all piled up.

“I think I just missed the bottom groove by a few inches, got loose and the wreck was on,” Busch said. “We had a win in our sights and I just drove the car at 101 percent instead of that 99.”

Stenhouse’s second-place effort equaled a career best. He previously finished runner-up at Bristol in 2014.

Buescher’s fifth-place run moved him inside the top-30 in the standings, making him provisionally Chase for the Sprint Cup eligible. The rookie pulled off a surprise victory earlier in the month at Pocono Raceway, but to qualify for NASCAR’s playoffs he must finish the regular season inside the top 30.

With three regular season races remaining, Buescher is 13 points ahead of David Ragan, currently 31st overall.

“We came to Bristol knowing that we had speed, that we love this racetrack, and it was a good chance for us to go out and have an awesome run, and that’s exactly what we were able to do,” Buescher said. “Points will fall however they will. You can’t focus on them too much because you lose sight of what the main goal is, and that’s to go out and win races.”

Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race full finishing order