Kahne, Earnhardt crash at Talladega

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Top) and Kasey Kahne were involved in separate accidents

Jason Smith and Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR

Brian Vickers led the final Sprint Cup Series practice at Talladega Superspeedway on Friday that included a multicar crash involving three Chase For The Sprint Cup contenders, including Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Kasey Kahne, who was second fastest, also was involved and will have to go to a backup Gillett Evernham Motorsports Dodge in Sunday’s Amp Energy 500.

Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet likely suffered a cut tire, according to the team and Goodyear, and triggered a six-car crash. Chase driver Clint Bowyer (Richard Childress Racing) was also involved and forced to use a backup car, as was Earnhardt Jr. Tony Stewart (Joe Gibbs Racing) was also involved in the wreck, but his team was able to fix his car.

“The tire seemed to come apart at the tread and the sidewall," Earnhardt Jr. said. “We looked at the car and really nothing had fell off of it. … It come out of nowhere. It was hard to see. We looked at some of the replays to see if anything came out from under it – maybe we can find it on a replay there was something we might have run over.

“It’s unfortunate. A lot of man-hours go into the primary. That was our [Budweiser] Shootout car. The car that’s the backup is our [Daytona] 500 car, so we’ve still got a good little race car for the race. We really aren’t any further behind when we were when we unloaded today.

“If you’re going to have that kind of day, this is a great track to have it. You put a lot of work into those cars, and it’s unfortunate for all of the guys that put so many hours into it. They worked really hard today, more than they were expecting to when they got up this morning."

Other drivers going to backups are David Reutimann (Michael Waltrip Racing) and David Gilliland (Yates Racing).