Livescore
Chris Buescher exited Richmond Raceway squarely on the bubble in the postseason grid to advance to the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs at the end of the regular season, which sits just three weeks away.
An up-and-down day at the Virginia short track left what was a very optimistic Buescher entering the race wondering what could have been after troubles on pit road left the driver of the No. 17 Ford Mustang for RFK Racing fighting an uphill battle for a majority of the evening.
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“It was a strong start to the weekend for us,” Buescher told NASCAR.com in a recent teleconference. “Obviously, really high expectations going back to Richmond, to the race that we were able to start our streak last year and to start off the race, we were in pretty good shape.
“We had our hiccup on pit road and ended up going, you know, a lap down there and kind of struggled to get back from that all night long. Really no cautions to help that until, what, (two) to go? So it ended up making for a bit of a long night; certainly not what we needed there.”
For Buescher, Richmond is now solely in the rearview mirror as the Cup Series heads to two other tracks where the Prosper, Texas native is the defending race winner, starting with the Michigan International Speedway on Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
Michigan holds great significance for RFK Racing — not only for Buescher, but for co-owners Jack Roush and Brad Keselowski as well as Ford, all of whom call Michigan a home track.
“Michigan is very important to everybody around here, right?” Buescher said. “Being a home track for Brad, home track for Jack, and then Ford’s backyard as well, it’s a big deal. And so we go to that race track, we know there’s a little added pressure.”
Last year, that pressure produced a victory after a fierce battle with a Cup Series champion over the closing laps.
“To be able to hold off Martin Truex Jr. there at the end, you know, was a heck of a race,” Buescher said. “I enjoyed the battle at that one and talked about it a lot at the time. But, you know, being able to battle with a racer like him, one of the cleanest guys out there, to the point where you have that respect, and you can race each other knowing that you’re not going to end up firewall deep in the fence from something silly, right? You’re going to have a hard race, but it’s going to be a good, clean, hard race.”
But with a playoff spot on the line this weekend and no margin for error, Buescher hopes to expand to a more comfortable lead — both in the points standings and on the track.
“I don’t want it to be quite that close,” Buescher said with a smile on his face. “You know, if we can get a little bit more of a stretch out, that would be OK.”
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As for Daytona, the other track out of the three remaining regular-season races where Buescher is the defending race winner, the 31-year-old isn’t thinking much about the outcome of the 400-mile event.
“We know that as we get to Daytona, there’s a certain amount of a wild card there, and we can’t control all that,” Buescher said. “That’s one of those races you got to have a little bit of good fortune on your side. We’re going to work hard with our teammate when we get there and and try and put ourselves in the best situation to to be able to get a win again.”
The last stop on the Cup Series trek to the postseason promised land is Darlington Raceway, a track where the No. 17 team has much history in past outings.
In Buescher’s last three starts at the track “Too Tough to Tame,” he has one top 10, a podium finish of third and was en route to potential victory in the Cup Series’ last trip to the South Carolina race track before contact with Tyler Reddick spoiled the chance at the win, giving the top spot to none other than Buescher’s teammate, Brad Keselowski.
“We talk about Richmond, Michigan and Daytona being our three wins last year,” Buescher said. “But yeah, Darlington was really strong for us last fall, and to be in the hunt to win it a couple of months back. And obviously Brad winning it shows that that RFK has got a lot of potential when we go to that one.
“I feel like everybody at RFK has worked so hard that I definitely don’t want to get through these next three and feel like we left something on the table. So it’s a matter of going to the race track, putting in all of our efforts, you know, don’t get conservative, right? That’s the biggest problem. I feel like what I see points racing through the years is you get conservative. You know, get back on your heels a little bit, and you can end up giving up way more than that, then you felt like you should have just tried to play it safe, and I don’t want to do that.”
As for Buescher’s mindset heading into the final three races before the 16 drivers who will compete for the Bill France Cup are decided, it is business as usual, taking each week one race track at a time and not adding any extra pressure to what is already a tight race at the elimination line.
“There’s no extra pressure. It’s every week, right?” he said. “I mean, if you break it down and put it into the week, you know the race that’s six days ahead of you every Monday, that’s the most important one.”
“We don’t want to circle races, and we haven’t had to this year. We’ve been fast at so many different styles of tracks that we haven’t been in that box where we’ve had to say ‘alright, we’re out of these three races,’ or, ‘we have to be on for this one because this is our best chance.’ No, we feel like they’re all our best chance.”
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