It would be fair to say that Kyle Busch has never carried the tag of a fan favourite during his Cup Series career thus far and following his controversial late race clash with Dale Earnhardt Jr at Richmond last week his popularity in the grandstands was at a new low for Saturday's Dodge Challenger 500 at Darlington. But that simply spurred him on to a dominant victory at the track labelled as ‘too tough to tame.'
Busch led nearly 170 laps around the resurfaced 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval as he recorded his third win of the 2008 season and not even the somewhat pithy response from the 75,000 strong sell-out crowd could dampen his spirits as he gladly played up to his ‘bad guy' tag.
With the venerable Darlington oval proving much quicker than in previous years thanks to the new, far less abrasive track surface Busch's victory came at a new record average speed of more than 140mph despite the 367-lap race being slowed by eight caution periods. While the colossal tyre degradation seen in previous years was no longer a major factor Darlington still lived up to its name as a car breaker with nearly three quarters of the starting field picking up a ‘Darlington stripe' during the course of the evening.
For the first 200 laps Busch and polesitter Greg Biffle seemed to be evenly matched with both taking turns at the front as fortunes ebbed and flowed between them. Biffle survived a near disastrous tap from Busch in turn one to establish a healthy three second lead as the race entered its second half before a lap 234 transmission failure cruelly ended his day and relegated the 2005 and 2006 Darlington winner to a 43rd place finish.
![Kyle Busch, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. [Pic Credit image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/411976.jpg)
