Auto Racing

TALLADEGA — Kevin Harvick might not win every race he starts, but he at least finishes them.

Although he finished 20th in Sunday's race, he was running when the checkered flag dropped, pushing his modern-era record of consecutive races running to 74.

It was threatened for a while.

He went for a wild ride with 23 laps to go, spinning down into the infield grass, but he saved the car and got it back on the track. Then he got collected in the Big One that involved 12 cars just14 laps from the finish. But his crew was able to patch his car back together and send him back on the track.

"You know, coming here you've got a 50-50 chance of making something happen," Harvick said as his team worked on his car after the Big One. "I felt like we raced hard all day and our fans are going to be proud of us for racing hard.

Star Multimedia
Slideshow: AMP Energy 500 View photos from the AMP Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.

"It wasn't David Ragan's fault or anything when he spun out. We just all got jammed up there just racing really hard. It was a lot of fun. I just hate for it to get tore up like that. We'll try to get back out and limp around there."

• NEWMAN NOSEDIVE: After starting the season with such promise, Ryan Newman completed a total tumble in the season series of restrictor plate races.

Newman won the Daytona 500 in February, but was the first driver out of Sunday's Amp Energy 500 at Talladega, sent behind the wall with engine trouble after completing only 48 laps.

In between, he finished eighth in the spring race here and 36th at Daytona in July.

"We broke a valve train or something in the engine, and that's the end of our day," Newman said. "The car just shut off when I was coming into the pits. It's just bad timing. Kurt's just broke, too (dropped a cylinder). I really can't explain what happened other than something in the engine let go."

• WE ARE FAMILY: What started out like a great weekend for the Wallace family turned sour on Sunday.

Mike Wallace, driving for Richard Childress Racing, blew a tire on the No. 33 Realtree Chevrolet setting him back to a 30th place finish.

Before the race, though, things were going great.

Chrissy Wallace posted her career-best ARCA finish on Friday, finishing ninth in the ARCA RE/MAX 250.

On Saturday, Mike qualified just outside of the Top 5 in the sixth spot.

• FAN BASE: Iirate fans at Talladega Superspeedway have thrown beer cans at Jeff Gordon's car in some of his recent wins. Once upon a time, Tony Stewart was even more hated than that.

After calling Talladega fans "obnoxious" years ago, Stewart drew the ire of the fan base for some time afterward. Some have forgiven him, to say the least.

A trio of women, with plenty of exposed skin to paint, slathered their bodies in Stewart's trademark orange with his No. 20 strategically placed in white paint. All done up, they converged on the Ken Patterson Infield Media Center, where Stewart was doing his post-game interview.

Outside, they peered through the windows and screamed and yelled to the point where Stewart jokingly took note of them.

"… Somebody is going to lose their vocal chords outside how happy they are," he said.