DARLINGTON, S.C.—Chris Buescher is experiencing the agony of defeat in earnest after leading the last two NASCAR Cup races in the final stages with nothing to show for it.
After losing last Sunday on the last lap at Kansas Speedway by the closest margin in NASCAR Cup history (0.001 seconds), Buescher was taken out of the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway with nine laps remaining following contact with Tyler Reddick.
Watching his teammate Brad Keselowski win did little to cool Buescher down after the checkered flag flew—and he was intent on letting Reddick know the extent of his displeasure on pit road.
Reddick acknowledged that he (screwed) up when confronted by Buescher. But that was little consolation for the 31-year-old driver of the No. 17 Roush Fenway Keselowski Ford.
“It doesn’t work for me,” Buescher told Reddick firmly. “We don’t have that (winner’s) sticker on the door right now. You need to be better. I don’t have that sticker on the door. This means more. I need you to be better. We’ve raced each other just fine for so long.”
Buescher walked away to cool off. Reddick removed his helmet and explained his side of the story.
“I screwed up, plain and simple,” Reddick said and then took a lengthy pause. “I understand why he’s frustrated. I tried to go for it and it didn’t work out. If it takes me out, that’s one thing, but I took him out, too. So I completely understand why he’s frustrated.
“We’ve raced each other great for a long time. I just crumbled all that up, so we’ll have to start over.”
Reddick was the class of the field early on. He won the pole and led four times for 174 of 293 laps. But after contact with Buescher, when Reddick slid up the track into Buescher’s Mustang in Turn 4, the No. 45 Toyota finished 32nd. The result didn’t bother Reddick as much as losing the respect of his fellow competitor.
“It sucks, honestly,” Reddick said. “It’s one thing to take yourself out of it, it really stings when someone who has nothing to do with it and was running his own race, gets a flat as well. That’s the part that really stings.”
Buescher was extremely patient over the closing laps of the race. He was running third and had a front row seat for the dog fight between Keselowski and Reddick, following the sixth and final restart on Lap 261 with 33 circuits remaining. After giving Keselowski a nudge to provide his teammate with an advantage over Reddick, Buescher could wait no longer and shot out to the lead on Lap 264.
But Reddick wasn’t going away quietly. On Lap 283, he closed to within 0.274 seconds of the No. 17 Ford. Three corners later, any chance of winning ended for both drivers.
“Just getting wiped out,” Buescher said. “For me, we know it’s gonna be good, hard racing here, but we hit so hard we wheel-hopped into the fence. I don’t get it. We’ve been able to race respectfully for our careers. I try and do that week in and week out and it’s not getting us anywhere right now. To just get wiped out like that with this Fifth Third Bank Mustang, that’s a big shame.
“On the flip side, I’m stoked for Brad and the 6 bunch and RFK to get a win here. That’s huge, but, right now, selfishly I’m mad for my team and our group. We had a great day there and we didn’t get any finish to show for it.”
In his victory celebration, Keselowski said he wouldn’t change a thing about Buescher.
“It might not have worked out today, but there’s other days where it works for him and makes him what he is,” Keselowski said. “It makes him special. It makes him good.
“I hate that he didn’t get the result out of it. I know he had some damage on the car, and that was holding him back a little bit, so he wasn’t able to drive away like you would assume a leader would do in a situation like that.”
Buescher damaged his car earlier during a chain reaction on the Lap 129 incident between Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. When Truex checked up, Buescher was running in the top 10 and had nowhere to go.
Despite finishing seventh in both stages, the 30th-place finish, two laps down, is hard to swallow.
Will Buescher race Reddick differently in the future?
“It’s got to come back around at some point,” Buescher said. “You try and be decent about it. We had clean racing all day long and to get flat-out fenced like that there’s no excuse. It’s a poor decision and an immature move. I just don’t get it.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
