Buescher looking to “seal the deal” to make NASCAR playoffs

Buescher, who had a breakout season last year with three wins, had hoped to already have a win in hand this season. However, despite coming excruciatingly close, he remains without a victory with four races left in the regular season.

Entering Sunday night’s race at Richmond (Va.) Richmond, Buescher is still in contention for a playoff berth based on points, but his situation is tenuous.

He holds the 15th spot in the 16-driver playoff grid by 10 points over Ross Chastain with Bubba Wallace the first driver outside the cutoff, 17 points behind Buescher.

A win in the next four races locks Buescher in the playoff field and he would much prefer that route to join his RFK Racing and co-owner Brad Keselowski in the title chase.

Chris Buescher, RFK Racing, BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang

Photo by: Nigel Kinrade / NKP / Motorsport Images

“I’m not nervous about it,” Buescher said Wednesday. “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. “We’ve got to be aware (of the points), but it’s not something that we’re up in arms about or worried about.”

A perfect opportunity to return to VL
The schedule offers Buescher and his No. 17 Ford team a rare opportunity.

Of the next four tracks – Richmond, Michigan, Daytona and Darlington – Buescher won on three of them last season on his way to a career-best seventh place finish in the series standings.

“That’s a pretty awesome statistic as we look at it, but last year’s results don’t equal this year’s,” he said. “We’ve been very good at a lot of different styles of race tracks. We’ve been very close to locking ourselves in.

“We’re plenty capable of progressing and winning a race here in the next four like we have been. We’ve just got to clean up and have a couple things go our way and just do a good job and control what we can from our side.”

It was one year ago at Richmond that Buescher kicked off his remarkable run of three wins over five weeks that gave him a rush of momentum heading into the 2023 playoffs.

To repeat that victory of a year ago was going to be difficult enough but circumstances have also changed in this fall’s Richmond race.

To help improve the quality of racing, NASCAR is allowing Goodyear to provide teams use of a softer, “option” tire (softer with more grip) in the 400-lap event.

Like they were able to do in this year’s All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway, teams will have three sets of the “option” tires at their disposal, with one set for practice and two for the race.

“We have a lot to learn on Saturday,” Buescher said of the extended practice session offered teams this weekend. “North Wilkesboro was the last time we tried this. North Wilkesboro was new asphalt and went into the evening.

“This is going to be an evening race, so maybe there is going to be some discrepancy on the option (tire). I promise we’ll be taking lots of notes to figure out what we think is going to happen in the race.”

Regardless, Buescher – who has a pair of runner-up finishes this year including a photo-finish loss to Kyle Larson at Kansas – believes his team can produce one or more wins before the end of the regular season.

“We’ve been very good at a lot of these places. We just haven’t been able to seal the deal, and it has gotten frustrating,” he said. “The hard part is keeping everybody’s head up because it’s a hard sport and we know that.

“I guess we’re just going to have to do the same thing we did last year and come to life now and make it a show.”