By: Toby Christie – Follow on Twitter @Tobalical

Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway several of NASCAR’s biggest names found themselves in huge trouble in the middle-to-late stages of the race. Matt Kenseth found himself as low as 27th at one point in the race, but he wouldn’t throw in the towel. Neither would fellow competitors Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick.

All four drivers found themselves outside the top-20 late in the AAA Texas 500, but each and every one of them rebounded for nice top-10 finishes.

Kenseth, who finished fourth gave credit to his crew chief, and his raceteam.

“It was Jimmy (Fennig) and those guys that made some really good decisions for adjustments and pit stops and we had some fairly decent restarts and got back in it,” Kenseth the 2003 Sprint Cup Champion stated. “I didn’t think we would ever be standing here with a top-five the way our day started. We started way off and these guys never gave up. They battled hard all day long and got me a good finish.”

Tony Stewart came home fifth, and for him it was just his second top-five finish through the first eight Chase races of 2012. It temporarilly stops the bleeding of what has been an abysmal Chase for the defending champion.

“…man I’m proud of our guys. What an awesome, awesome come back. The set-up that we ended up running in the race we had six laps on at the end of happy hour yesterday. God I’m just so proud of everybody on the pit crew on the pit stops. The last two stops got us a lot of track position and really proud of Steve Addington (crew chief) he just kept digging away at it and kept tweaking on it making it better and better all day,” said Stewart. “Just really happy with the effort today.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was having possibly his least competitive race through his career at Texas Motor Speedway, and until a debris caution saved him late in the race it seemed he was destined to finish the night a lap down. However when he got a lucky break, he and crew chief Steve Letarte got it together and turned the off-night into a seventh place finish.

“Well we just restarted on the outside and it’s a little tough out there to make any ground. We had been on the inside all day making up time. We had a pretty good car at the start of the race. We dialed it way out and got real slow and made some great changes near the end,” a relieved Earnhardt said. “The pit crew really did a good job, they gained us about eight spots on pit road there those last two stops. Just real happy with the way we were able to rebound. I would have liked to have run in the top-five maybe been a little closer to the front, but we definitely run a little bit better like we should.”

This is Earnhardt’s first top-10 finish since his two week absence following a series of concussions.

Nobody had a stranger start to the day than Kevin Harvick. He had a skydiver for the Re/Max dive team slam into the side of his racecar, while it was sitting on the grid two hours before the green flag. The damage forced his team to quickly take the car to the garage for emergency repairs, which they were able to complete.

When the car started the race, it fell like a brick and it looked to be a rough night for Harvick. But just as the men previously mentioned he got up on the wheel when the sun went down and he grabbed a ninth-place finish, and just like the men previously mentioned he gave all credit to his team.

“The team did a great job keeping us in the game today. We had a tough time making the right adjustments to get the Rheem Chevrolet handling the way I needed it to be, but the pit crew was solid today and I have to thank them for all their hard work this weekend.”

– Toby Christie is the lead Motorsports writer for Sicknissified.com, and he can be reached via twitter or email. Tweet him @Tobalical or email him at tobalical@sicknissified.com. You can also find his work at TheFinalLap.com this weekend.