DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. --- Tony Stewart didn't do anything wrong in the final 100 yards of Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

Kyle Busch didn't, either.

So why did Busch go flying into the outside wall and onto Kasey Kahne's car in a five-car pileup at the finish line?

Drivers pointed to two words: restrictor plates.

The device placed on engines at two tracks to control speeds for the sake of safety provided another death-defying finish that left cars littered along the frontstretch. And like the carnage left at Talladega in the last restrictor- plate race in April, everyone walked away without a scratch. Again.

Busch was leading with the checkered flag in sight when he swerved to cut off Stewart's charge. Their bumpers touched, sending Busch into a wild slide. Joey Logano, A.J. Allmendinger and Jeff Burton also were involved. All five cars were destroyed, but all five drivers walked away unscathed.

Stewart's victory was tempered by the finish. He led 86 laps, including a run of 30 in a row until Busch jumped out of line to lead the white flag lap. As they came off the fourth turn on the final lap, Stewart moved to the outside. Busch turned left, apparently not realizing Stewart had his front bumper to his right-rear wheel.

"You just don't want a race to be decided like that," Stewart said. "I just don't feel as much gratification from winning this race as I probably should, I guess, just because I don't like the way the outcome happened.

"I don't know that we did anything wrong."

Jimmie Johnson steered through the pileup to finish second. Like everyone else, he said finishes like Talladega and Daytona will be commonplace until something changes.

"There is nothing to do to stop it," Johnson said. "If you think about the position that the sport is in -- one race, it's boring, there's no racing, there's no excitement. And then a couple races there's an exciting finish and we're worried about the exciting finish. You know, it's plate racing.

"The guys are racing. Tony didn't mean to dump him. Same thing with Talladega. It's just the product of restrictor plate racing. Every time we use the restrictor plate tracks there's questions about how we can keep from having the big wreck and things like that, and you just can't.

"When you run plates and we run wide open all the way around the track, situations like this come around."

Denny Hamlin finished third. He was the only driver from Joe Gibbs Racing who wasn't involved in the final-lap crash. His teammates are Logano and Busch.

Carl Edwards also drove through the crash to finish fourth. At Talladega, he left his battered car on the track and ran the final 150 yards to finish.

Stewart extended his lead in the Sprint Cup standings to 180 points over Jeff Gordon and 194 over Johnson.

The race crippled several drivers hoping to make the 12-driver cutoff for the Chase for the Championship in September. Despite wrecking, Kahne moved into the top 12, while Mark Martin, who crashed early Saturday, moved to 13th.

Points, however, were of little solace to Stewart.

"It's nobody's fault; it's just racing," he said. "I mean, it's a product of the environment. It doesn't mean the environment is bad, it just means that's the way it is.

"Even if it's 100 percent his fault, I still won't feel good about it. I think racers hold the integrity of the sport in mind. The outcome may go your way, but it doesn't mean that you have to like how it happened."

Reach Don Coble at don.coble@morris.com.