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. (Continued)