TALLADEGA, Ala. -- The carnage was spread everywhere.

Twenty minutes following the conclusion of Sunday's Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway, the No. 31 Chevrolet of driver Jeff Burton still sat motionless on pit road, hood up and its right-front quarter-panel pretty much gone missing.

The No. 48 Chevy driven by two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson barely made it into the garage area, the left side so completely bashed in that the left-front tire would no longer turn. Johnson drove it in anyway, then jumped out to engage in an animated conversation with crew chief Chad Knaus over how it all happened.

A quick stroll through the rest of the garage revealed that the damage wasn't exclusive to Chevrolets. The No. 9 Dodge of Kasey Kahne ... the No. 99 Ford of Carl Edwards ... the No. 44 Toyota of David Reutimann ... those and several others also were damaged heavily.

This is how it is at the end of a race at Talladega. For 177 of the 188-lap event, the 43 drivers mostly stayed out of trouble. They raced hard, often making the unique 2.66-mile circuit two- and three- and even occasionally four-wide at speeds approaching 200 mph.

But as usual, the sense was that the Big One was coming -- or as it turned out in this case, the Big Two.

Brian Vickers, who drove his No. 83 Toyota to a fifth-place finish, certainly sensed it. But then he always does.

"Everybody always gets more aggressive toward the end," Vickers said. "Everybody is pretty calm there at the beginning; then at the end, they feel like they have to start making moves. And they start feeling like they have to make 'em faster and faster and faster before the end of the race. It gets three- and four-wide, and people are going to make mistakes when they get that aggressive.

"It's just part of the racing here. It's not gonna change. You just accept it. There's no reason to whine about it."

False alarm

It looked as if the Big One was coming on Lap 170, when eventual winner Kyle Busch banged door-to-door with Jamie McMurray as they emerged from the tri-oval and barreled into the frontstretch. Somehow, both drivers saved their cars from spinning out of control -- which might have collected up to a half-dozen or more that had been running directly behind them.

"I thought I was going out of the park," Busch admitted.

He didn't, and Vickers, among others, continued to hold their collective breath.

The Big One came seven laps later, when Tony Stewart found he suddenly had nowhere to go and started bouncing off cars, touching off a six-car wreck that included the machines of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kurt Busch, Martin Truex Jr., Bobby Labonte and the hard-luck McMurray (watch video). It was nobody's fault and everybody's fault all at the same time.

It was simply what happens at Talladega, later rather than sooner. Every single time. You can count on it as surely as you can count on some drunks passing out beads to young ladies in the infield.

Aaron's 499

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
2.	Juan Montoya	Dodge
3.	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
4.	David Ragan	Ford
5.	Brian Vickers	Toyota
6.	Travis Kvapil	Ford
7.	Casey Mears	Chevrolet
8.	Ryan Newman	Dodge
9.	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet
10.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet

• Complete Results | Lap-by-Lap
• Race Video | Photo Gallery

"It's just the nature of the race, and I don't think it's going to change," Vickers said. "I've been in those big pileups. I've been in the middle of 'em where you feel like there's nothing you can do.

"It definitely sucks. But that's part of racing four-wide and 43 deep."

Well, it sucks to be in the middle of them with nowhere to go. But there was very little or nothing about Sunday's race that sucked for the 156,000 in attendance or watching on television.

In the opinion of Denny Hamlin, who drove his No. 11 Ford to a third-place finish, it was the best race not only of the 2008 season but in his recent memory.

"This was an excellent race -- the best race I've seen in two to three years in the Sprint Cup Series," Hamlin said. "This is what we need, as race fans and teams and owners and drivers. This is the kind of racing we need to see out there each and every week.

Not perfect

The race wasn't perfect, but then what sporting event ever is?

Hamlin and eventual second-place finisher Juan Montoya were charging hard, challenging Busch for the lead coming down the home stretch when a second, even larger Big One unfolded on the final lap (watch video). It came after the white flag had flown signifying the last lap, meaning there would be no race to the checkered and no manufactured green-white-checkered finish (which are great for the fans and generally loathed by the race competitors).

It would have been interesting, as was most of the rest of the race. Hamlin actually was pushing Montoya from behind in a powerful drafting duo that had worked well together for much of the afternoon.

Hamlin and Montoya, who pilots the No. 42 Dodge for Chip Ganassi Racing, are not teammates. Hamlin and Kyle Busch are (you might have read something earlier in the weekend about their "other" teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing).

But Hamlin said he was prepared to do whatever he could to run for the win, even if it might have meant temporarily giving a shove to Montoya that might have sent the enemy to the lead instead.

"It was gonna get exciting -- because I had the 42 jacked up there," Hamlin said. "I was daring him to make a move on the outside. I pushed him many, many times to the lead [Sunday]. Whether he thought I was going to push him to the lead there, who knows? Maybe I would have pushed him to the outside, then took it three-wide on the 18 and him.

"It would have been an exciting finish, but either way it was a great race."

A few minutes after Hamlin made this declaration, the No. 31 car was hooked up to a tow truck and hauled off pit road to the garage. Looks can be deceiving, however, as Burton managed to register a respectable 12th-place finish from the mangled hulk, allowing him to maintain his hold on first in the point standings.

"That was definitely a wild finish," Burton said. "We were involved in that wreck on the last lap and ended up cutting a tire, but I was able to limp across the finish line."

Who cares what the cars look like at the end? It's Talladega, baby, where the ends always justify whatever the means that it takes to get there.

That's just the way it is, and it's always fun to watch.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.