DARLINGTON, S.C. -- The Lady in Black loves to dance with familiar faces, which is why it was so surprising to see three unfamiliar names at the top of the leaderboard Saturday night.

How much does Darlington Raceway favor favorites? Consider 2007, when 11 of the top-12 finishers went on to make the Chase.

Travis Kvapil

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

• Complete Results | Lap-by-Lap
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It's not easy to complete 367 grueling laps in traffic without winding up with an unpleasant souvenir of your meeting with the wall. Kyle Busch lost count of the times he tagged the fence -- and he ended up winning.

So for David Ragan, Travis Kvapil and Dave Blaney, not only did they survive, but they scored top-10 finishes on a night when the average race pace set a record. And in each case, it was a chance to carry positive momentum from a place that rarely allows such peace of mind.

For Ragan, finishing fifth was an opportunity to compare himself with some of NASCAR's greats at a track steeped in history.

"That's an awesome run," Ragan said. "Whether we were at Daytona, Talladega or Richmond or Bristol, that would be great but to do it at Darlington is just something special. Darlington is an awesome track.

"You're running laps out there and you think about the guys that made this place famous like Cale Yarborough and [Bill] Elliott and David Pearson and people like that. It just makes you realize how fortunate we are to come out here and race at such a cool track."

Starting 15th, Ragan broke into the top 10 by the halfway point of the race. In fact, he was leading during a round of green-flag stops when he missed the entrance to pit road on Lap 205.

"I made a couple of mistakes [Saturday night] like overshooting pit road that one time and I had to come back [around]," Ragan said. "Fortunately, we had a good stop and we had a fast enough car to where we didn't lose much, so that was a lot of fun."

Ragan said Darlington is unique because it requires so much concentration.

"I thought I'd been running all night and I looked up and it was like only 100 laps, but what an awesome racetrack," Ragan said. "Mentally, this is the toughest track we go to. I can think of a few more tracks that's physically tougher, but mentally this place is tough."

For Blaney, a ninth-place finish put his team back into the top 35 in owner points, guaranteeing him a spot in the Coca-Cola 600 later this month.

"This is a brand-new car, and it was really good all weekend," Blaney said. "It was really solid. They kept getting it better and better all night. That last run, we kind of faltered for some reason. But not bad, man."

For a team that hadn't had a finish better than 18th -- and missed qualifying for Talladega -- a solid top-10 finish was just what the doctor ordered.

"That is a run that this team needed," Blaney said. "If we can get our act together, we can do this. Our pit crew did a good job, pitting with the front group of guys, holding their own. It was a good night for us."

How important is it to get the team back in the top 35?

"It's huge, really huge," Blaney said. "You don't want that struggle if you don't have to have it. We put ourselves in that position. We just haven't run well. I'm just happy for the whole group."

For Kvapil, an eighth-place finish gave the No. 28 Ford some valuable television time -- which may lead to sponsorship for the rest of the season. And it almost got away early, when Kvapil received minor damage as a result of the incident between Elliott Sadler and Tony Stewart.

"I had an awesome car near the beginning of the race," Kvapil said. "Then we got in that second-lap wreck and it was just hard to get our track position back. We drove right back up through the field, but as easy as it was to get up there, the car was really tight."

Kvapil said other teams were quicker to adjust to the changing track conditions, one reason why he slipped out of the top 10 for much of the middle portion of the race.

"We kind of fell behind on our adjustments," Kvapil said. "It took us two or three stops to get up with it, and when we finally did, we had a pretty good racecar but in the middle part of the race, we just got too far behind in our adjustments. We got way too tight, lost our track position. At the end, we were good. We just were too far back."

However, the team found the right setup at the end, and Kvapil stayed calm in the closing laps.

"I knew I had a good enough car that I could make my way to the front," Kvapil said. "But I couldn't put it in the wall and end it early. I was patient all night, working my way up there and ended up with a good result."