The boos keep coming, but Busch just keeps winning

DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The right side of the No. 18 car was so scraped up that the paint scheme was barely recognizable, but at this point in the evening nobody seemed to mind. They held up three fingers signifying their third Sprint Cup victory of the season, sprayed champagne and Gatorade, and celebrated around a tall crystal trophy shaped like a palmetto tree. As the Victory Lane interview was broadcast over the public address system, a chorus of boos rained down from the grandstands at Darlington Raceway.

"These guys love it. They love the noise that the fans make," Kyle Busch said in retort. "So keep it up, everybody."

Yeah, keep it up, everybody. All you're doing is egging the kid on. Busch earns the wrath of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s massive fan base by spinning out the sport's most popular driver, and what happens? The 23-year-old becomes the youngest Darlington winner ever with an impressive victory at NASCAR's most unforgiving track, going to the rear after a pit-road miscue, slapping the wall in the later stages, and still winning with relative ease. They booed him when he appeared with his mother during driver intros. So the guy whose Indiana Jones-themed crew sported fedoras and bullwhips before the race went on to whip up on the competition.

He emerged from the chaos last weekend at Richmond International Raceway to record the most significant victory of his young career, winning at a track where usually only the best win. Two days of hand-wringing and forehead-scrunching over Darlington's speedy, slippery new pavement culminated Saturday night in Busch blowing everybody out. He was the next-to-last car on the lead lap with 145 to go after he had to make an extra stop for a loose lug nut. He pancaked the wall late in the race. He still won. He would have won had the new surface been made of ice. The final margin of victory was more than 3 seconds. Runner-up Carl Edwards called him "unbeatable."

Lee White, vice president of Toyota Racing Development, put the victory in perspective. "For a guy like Tony Stewart and all the success he's had in 10 years in this business, he's never won at this racetrack," said White, referring to the two-time Cup champion who is Busch's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing. "That tells you how tough it is."

Dodge Challenger 500

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
2.	Carl Edwards	Ford
3.	Jeff Gordon	Chevrolet
4.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet
5.	David Ragan	Ford
6.	Matt Kenseth	Ford
7.	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
8.	Travis Kvapil	Ford
9.	Dave Blaney	Toyota
10.	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet

• Results | Points | Lap-by-Lap
• Race Video | Photo Gallery

And afterward came the same tired refrain, the boos cascading down from folks who still can't let go of Richmond, or are convinced he got away with cheating by passing below the yellow line at Talladega, or fear his international car manufacturer, or invent a host of other invisible phobias. Here's the rub: Kyle doesn't care. You boo him, and he tops a second-place finish with a victory. He strengthens his hold on the points lead. He does his burnout, hops out of the car, and does that exaggerated bow that seems to say -- take that.

Do the boos bother him? "Not really," he said. "I don't care. I'm here to win. If I win, it just makes 'em more upset and crying on their way home. By the way, somebody threw a beer can at me. Next time just make sure it's full so I can enjoy it out there, all right?"

You're just feeding the beast, people. The thing is, that in-your-face Kyle we see too often these days isn't necessarily the real thing. Much like his older brother Kurt, there's a lower-key, much more likeable guy somewhere inside. But the booing and the animosity have created this other Kyle Busch, which is beginning to be the only one we see in public these days. Because every time he's in public, he's getting booed by Junior fans who seem to want to hold a grudge for life.

"I just think Kyle is definitely maturing," car owner Joe Gibbs said. "I see it in him. He hated last week, all of us did. None of us wanted that to happen, to him or to Junior. Certainly we didn't want that to happen. It showed a lot of mental toughness on his part bouncing back [Saturday night]. This is a tough place to try and win a race."

Granted, the kid has his rough edges. Over team radio he can be brutally critical of his own team -- he called the brakes on his car "pathetic" early in the race, even though he was leading by two seconds -- but he was profuse in his praise for his guys after taking the checkered flag. "I can't tell you guys how proud of you I am. I appreciate all the hard work you guys do," he said, sounding nothing like the villain so many people think him to be.

"I think if he had his choice, he wouldn't be the villain," former teammate Jeff Gordon said. "I don't think he wants to be that. I know Kyle's a good guy, you know? And he's an incredibly talented racecar driver. He just gets himself into situations, you know, that just follow him. He just needs to accept it, go with it, be yourself. And I think there's an opportunity here for him. Not that he needs to go crashing Dale Jr. very often. I don't think that's going to do him too many favors. But having a love-hate relationship out there with the fans is not a bad thing. I heard more noise for him [Saturday] than I've ever heard for him. And all I can remember when I came into this sport is riding around with Dale Earnhardt, and him getting a lot of boos and cheers, and all he cared about was how much noise they made."

And these days, they're making plenty of noise. They're going to make plenty more. Busch has won six weeks in a row in some sort of vehicle, ranging from late models to Sprint Cup cars. He's not finished. The scariest part? "I'm very humble and grateful to have won six weeks in a row," he said, "but I felt there could have been more."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.