Kyle Busch celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the Bud Shootout during the 2012 Daytona Speedweeks, Day 3 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida on February 18, 2012. (Rusty Jarrett MRD/CIA)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.— The madness has begun.

Kyle Busch wrecked. He wrecked several times, in fact, making incredible saves on at least two occasions during Saturday night’s Budweiser Shootout.

And then he beat Tony Stewart with a pass just yards shy of the finish line to cap a wild evening that left nearly everyone shaking their heads in disbelief.

“He did exactly what he needed to do,” said Stewart, the defending series champion.

“I don’t know how many times I about spun out, but I didn’t spin out,” Busch said. “I’ve seen the move done before, it was my turn to do it this time.”

The race, scheduled for 75 laps, went 82 instead, the result of a wild, scary crash that saw four-time champion Jeff Gordon wind up on his roof barely two laps from the scheduled finish.

The eight-car incident, the third of the night for the non-points event, unfolded when Gordon and Busch made contact in Turn 4, sending Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports entry up and into the wall where it collected the car of Kurt Busch and eventually teammate Jimmie Johnson.

The force of the impact from Busch and Johnson sent Gordon’s car sliding onto its driver’s side before it began a series of rolls, eventually coming to rest on its roof.

Gordon, incredibly, was not injured.

“That’s the first time I’ve been upside down in 19, 20 years,” Gordon said. “Great racing, wild finish and we were in position to have a shot at winning this thing. That’s what I feel bad about.”

Stewart held the lead when the race took the green for the final time, but quickly fell to second when Marcos Ambrose charged to the lead. By the time the field took the white flag, Busch had pushed Stewart back out front, and the two cars raced around the 2.5-mile track intent on settling it among themselves.

In the end, they did.

Busch made his move, swinging to the outside of Stewart as they pair headed to the finish line, crossing the stripe by just 0.013 second.

The race was run in two segments, opening with a 25 lap run and closing, after a brief 10-minute break, with a scheduled 50-lap battle.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 11th at the break but appeared to have one of the fastest cars during the first, leading twice for 12 laps. Jamie McMurray, who ended the segment on top, had led three times for five laps at that point.

Trailing McMurray at the line were Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Ambrose.

It took only eight laps for mayhem to strike, with contact from David Ragan sending Paul Menard spinning as the field entered Turn 1. Nine cars, including those of Matt Kenseth, Kasey Kahne and Denny Hamlin, were swept up into the 200-mph incident.

Damage to the entries of Menard, Ragan and Michael Waltrip was severe enough to send those cars to the garage.

“Everybody was real racy and I just got into the back of Menard,” Ragan said. “You get a good run and you’re pushing a little bit and I guess he was pushing whoever was in front of him and when you’ve got the meat in between the sandwich you usually get wrecked.”

Menard said the “two-car draft … the tandem drafting seemed to be a lot easier to pass.”

“A lot less chaotic,” he said. “This is pretty damn chaotic, but we’ll fix it.”

The wild racing and razor-thin margin for error wasn’t limited to the first segment, however. At lap 56, contact between Ambrose, Joey Logano and Truex Jr. started a wild chain-reaction accident in Turn 2 that collected Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth.

“Going to take a lot more patience,” Harvick says.