Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford, is currently 12th in NASCAR Cup Series points and is the defending winner of this weekend’s Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway.
The native of Prosper, Texas, enjoyed the two-week Olympic break in the Cup Series schedule, equipped with a “Honey Do” list in hand.
“It was definitely relaxing and enjoyable,” Buescher said. “We got to have a lot of fun with the family … I got a lot of stuff done around the house, little projects I’ve been putting off and probably about 20% of what I thought I’d get done, but that’s about how it goes.”
He’ll be back in the driver’s seat this coming weekend as four races remain in the regular season schedule to be completed at Richmond, Michigan, Daytona and Darlington before the Playoffs begin at Atlanta on Sept. 8.
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Buescher is the quiet type but very confident in himself and his team, feeling he will either score a victory in one or more of the next four outings to secure a Playoff spot or log enough points in the Round of 16 to begin a strong run toward winning this year’s Cup Series championship.
“I’m not nervous about it,” Buescher said. “It’s something that we’re going to pay a little bit more attention to as we run down into these final four here, but I’m pretty adamant about it. I don’t want to change the way we approach our races. I’ve just seen it too many times in our sport where you try and get put back on your heels and change up what you’re doing and it can end up costing you.
“We’ve got to race our races, put our best foot forward and that should be enough to get us where we need to go. Three of the next four races we’re heading into, we were able to win last year, so that’s a pretty awesome statistic as we look at it, but last year’s results don’t equal this year’s. We’ve been very good at a lot of different styles of racetracks. We’ve been very close to locking ourselves in, but we’ve been very good.”
Buescher feels all four remaining races before the Playoffs begin are important, but Darlington and Daytona pose the biggest obstacles for reaching the team’s goals for moving forward.
“Yes, (Daytona) may not be the final one, but realistically Darlington has a lot lower chance of producing a new winner,” Buescher said. “Let’s say that last year was by far the easiest Daytona race that we’ve ever had from the mental side of things knowing that if you ultimately got caught up in something that it was not going to be a season make or break moment for us. We had already done what we needed to do, but it also enabled us to go out there and be even more aggressive and be able to win that thing. We made big moves that we may not have otherwise, but that was a very nice way to go into it.
“I sure would like to be in that same situation when we go back, so we’ve got an important two weeks coming up for us. When you get to that race it typically can become just a very crazy event just for the simple fact that there are a lot of people looking for that last chance.”
With that said, the stakes will be higher, knowing those 160 laps around the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway can become very tense.
“Buescher added, “I think there are going to be a vast majority of winless teams that are going to see Daytona as their only chance or by far their best chance and are not going to feel like they can rely on Darlington for that moment.”
Having been out of their cars for the past two weeks, drivers will need to get that familiar feel back when they get to the three-quarter-mile Richmond Raceway this weekend. They must get back to the small things and hope they don’t make costly mistakes during the 400-mile race set for Sunday (6 p.m., USA).
“I don’t think it’s going to affect the aggression,” Buescher said. “I’d imagine we’re going to see more mistakes than we would just coming off a single week. I think it’ll take a little bit to get everybody’s mind back right and whether that’s going to be hitting pit road in a clean way, restarts, making mistakes, even just last race here at Richmond we had some big moments where drivers completely missed corners on restarts and really sliding up and creating really big moments.
“I don’t know if that’s just a mental thing that everybody’s got to get back in a rhythm of some sort, but I don’t think that I would expect the aggression to be different as we go into this one. I think you will see mistakes made that wouldn’t be very typical of our field.”
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Chris Buescher fighting for NASCAR playoff field
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