Last weekend Kyle Busch became the most hated driver in NASCAR after being involved in a crash with the sport’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., just two laps from the finish in Richmond. This week, his ascension to that lofty spot showed, as the fans at Darlington Raceway showered him with an echo of boos before, during and after the Dodge Challenger 500.

But Busch didn’t care. He ended the night in Victory Lane, crowd pleaser or not.

“It’s pretty awesome,” Busch said. “Darlington obviously showed again tonight that is one of the hardest places — always has been, and always will be. Even with the fresh asphalt this place is tough.”

The win was his third of the year with his new Joe Gibbs Racing team in the Sprint Cup Series. He also leads the point standings by 79-markers over Richard Childress Racing’s Jeff Burton. On Saturday, the 23-year-old Busch led a race-high 169 laps throughout the event in his No. 18 Toyota, in which he received more than just a few “Darlington stripes.”

Busch, though not struggling in the new car statistically (he also won the first race in Bristol last season when the car was dubbed the “Car of Tomorrow”), hasn’t ceased in his assertion of NASCAR’s new piece.

“It just doesn’t turn,” Busch explained. “It doesn’t want to do what it needs to do here. It became one of those aero-sensitive racetracks because there is only one lane you can run around this place that is the fast way around. Any time that you want to get by somebody, you just have to save your stuff and try to maneuver past them somehow, someway, but it’s hard to do.”

Busch had early competition and a back-and-forth exchange for the lead with pole-sitter Greg Biffle. Biffle survived early pit road troubles with loose lugs but was sidelined when the engine in his Roush Fenway Ford went sour on lap 233. He ended the event a disappointing 43rd after leading 95 laps.

Before its troubles, Biffle’s entry wasn’t the only Roush Fenway Racing machine that was on rails Saturday night. His teammate, Carl Edwards, had a solid run, carrying the banner for the organization after Biffle’s woes. His No.99 Ford finished runner-up to Busch.

“Man, I wanted to beat him bad — I wanted to beat him so bad,” Edwards said.  “Now we’re tied for wins. I wanted to keep him down a little bit, but he did a great job.”

Four-time champion Jeff Gordon has had a mountain of mishaps of late but finally clawed his way back into the top 10 in the point standings following a third-place finish.

“The No.18 was in an unbelievable class of his own,” Gordon said. “Carl and his crew got their stuff better there at the end. We tried and tried a lot of things and every time we got it a little bit better but every time we tried to get it better than that, we went the wrong way with it. We just had to settle for a car that was a third-place car and hope we could get track position and we did.”

Though still peeved that Busch won, Junior Nation fans had a lot to cheer about under the famed Darlington lights as Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth.

David Ragan and Matt Kenseth, teammates to Biffle and Edwards, finished fifth and sixth, respectively. Ragan’s run boosted him into the 12th position in the driver standings, the final slot for the Chase contention.

There were eight caution flags on the track dubbed “too tough too tame.” Elliott Sadler sure couldn’t tame it or handle the new surface. He had trouble on lap 2, tangling with two-time champion Tony Stewart. Stewart won Friday’s Nationwide Series event but finished the Cup race 21st due to the incident.

Denny Hamlin, Travis Kvapil, Dave Blaney and Jeff Burton closed out the top-10 finishers.

With his finish, Blaney moved into the top 35 in car owner points, securing a spot in the next points-awarded race at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway in two weeks.

Next week the Sprint Cup Series competitors will run under the lights at Lowe’s in various All-Star events, but will race only for money and bragging rights.

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