Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is flourishing and finishing fast these days. Danica Patrick is floundering, stuck in back-packers purgatory.

Theirs is a love story, NASCAR style, about two drivers who met on the job and decided to mix the professional and the personal.

“I have a boyfriend; his name is Richard,” Patrick said during an interview with the Associated Press in February 2013 when they went public with the romance.

The personal side of things has gone splendidly.

The professional side is a bit bumpy.

Stenhouse made a last-lap pass in overtime Sunday at Talladega to put the squeeze on Kyle Busch and win for the first time in 158 career Cup starts. He definitely found enough speed after starting from the pole.

Patrick was involved in the usual Talladega crash with 19 laps to go, a massive Big One that took out 18 cars. Patrick slammed hard into an inside wall, though the incident was no fault of her own.

Still, it was literally another crushing blow during a season of hard knocks. Patrick dropped two spots in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup standings from 29th to 31st. She hasn’t been anywhere near the front in 10 races, a resume that includes the dreaded “DNF” (did not finish) four times.

Overall, Patrick has not won in 164 Cup starts over six years and is falling way short of the standard she set for her Stewart-Haas Racing team at the start of the season — to shoot for top-15 finishes.

“It’s important to be realistic, so to tell you to go out and win races and segments is not something I necessarily think is going to happen right away, but we’ll assess,” Patrick said in February. “We’ll assess how strong we are as a team.”

Early verdict: Not very good.

Meanwhile, Stenhouse is 12th in the standings, playoff-ready and looking solid. And whether the label is fair or not, the “Danica’s boyfriend” perception is no more.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said Sunday. “We’ve got a great relationship, just like anybody else does, and our main focus is to go out and run well and win races and do what we have to do to do that.

“She understands that I’m going to go to the shop a lot, and to have that support and her knowing where I’m coming from is great to have. I don’t mind being known as her boyfriend. She doesn’t mind being known as my girlfriend. Either way, we couldn’t be in a better place right now.”

They have managed to mix work and pleasure. They have equal custody of two dogs. Come weekends, they spend their time together in a motorhome, dogs in tow.

If Ricky’s girlfriend can get up to speed, it could be the start of something big.

Viewing perspective: By all accounts, the grandstands were perky for the Geico 500 in Talladega on Sunday. The grandstands, which accommodate 80,000 fans, seemed full, and as always the infield was strong and rocking.

Eyeballs elsewhere, not so much.

According to Sports Media Watch, the race earned a 3.4 overnight rating on Fox, down 11 percent from both last year and 2015 (3.8). It was also the lowest overnight for the race since at least 1998 — including a rainout in 2006 (3.8).

The race — one of the signature events of the Cup series — has set or tied a multiyear low in five consecutive years, a decline that adds up to 30 percent.

The positive spin is that Talladega ranked fourth among broadcast sporting events last weekend, behind the Kentucky Derby and a pair of NBA playoff games.

Edwards speeds again: Carl Edwards is retired from stock-car racing, but he still can’t shake his need for speed.

Edwards recently strapped into a heavily modified Toyota Land Cruiser and jacked it up to more than 230 mph at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

“We just did something pretty crazy,” Edwards told nascar.com. “We drove an SUV over 230 mph. But I’m telling you, at 225 mph the thing was wandering a little bit, and trying to keep my foot in it.”

Edwards had a partner in crime during the speed rush — Craig Stanton, a champion road racer and regular test driver for Toyota Racing Development.

Edwards jokingly said that he didn’t ask Stanton enough pertinent questions before going full throttle.

“Craig Stanton said, ‘No matter what, keep your foot in it, and we got 230 mph,’?” Edwards said. “It’s an unofficial record, but I think it’s safe to say it’s the fastest SUV on the planet.”

gdiaz@orlandosentinel.com