MARTINSVILLE, Va.—After a miserable outing at Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR Cup contender Chris Buescher had a reality check.
Despite winning three races during the regular season, having just one stage win and 95 stage points has put the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team in a hole.
With a 21st-place finish at Homestead, and dropping to 43 points below the cut line, the path to the Championship 4 event at Phoenix is clear.
“It’s pretty basic for us now,” Buescher said. “Qualify up front and win the race. That’s our only way to keep moving on. I haven’t had the results the last two weeks to get us any sort of forgiveness there. We know what we’ve got to do.”
Since the Round of 8 began at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Buescher has yet to score a top-10 finish or gain any stage points. He finished 11th—the last of the eight Playoff contenders at Vegas and failed to lead a lap.
Last Sunday at Homestead, Buescher fought a tight condition and fell off the lead lap early.
With strategy and solid pit stops, Buescher returned to the lead lap with 30 circuits remaining in the race but it was too little, too late.
Had it not been for mechanical with the Toyotas of Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr., or Kyle Larson plowing into the sand barrels at the entrance of pit road, it’s likely Buescher would have finished last of the title contenders again. Hamlin, Truex and Larson all led laps and scored points in both stages. Buescher did not.
No doubt, 2023 has been a breakout year for the affable racer, who turns 31 on Sunday. But even his owner/teammate, Brad Keselowski, who was eliminated from the Playoffs following the round of 12, has out-raced Buescher in the last two races.
Like the aforementioned competitors Hamlin, Truex and Larson, the 2012 Cup champ has gained points in all four stages in this round. He led 38 laps at Vegas and finished fourth. At Homestead, Keselowski finished second in the first stage, fifth in Stage 2 and had led 16 laps before he was swept up in a wreck involving Carson Hocevar, Ross Chastain and JJ Yeley with 45 laps remaining in the 4EVER 400. He finished 28th.
Still, with Buescher qualifying for the Playoffs for just the second time in his career—and advancing deeper in the rounds than ever before—the reversal of fortunes between the Nos. 6 and 17 could not have come at a worse time.
“I just needed a break,” Buescher said. “We missed it for fire off and went down a lap early. The cautions, the crashes and the barrels—everything timed out just wrong for us. We needed some of that to go our way. We made good adjustments. We found good speed. We were able to pass lead lap cars and move forward, it just didn’t mean anything at the time.”
On Saturday, Buescher was 13th fastest in practice. He’ll roll off 18th in Sunday’s Xfinity 500—one spot ahead of fellow Playoff contender Tyler Reddick.
“It will be tricky, but I know we’re gonna work hard on this Nexletol Ford Mustang to get us in a good place,” Buescher said. “I felt like we made some decent adjustments from practice. We’re just really diving into notes now from the last race here and trying to figure out how to get better, so we’re close on time. We’re in the right tenth of a second bracket, but just on the wrong side of it. It’s not that we’re way off here, we just have to make some small changes and be ready to pass some cars.
“I feel like this is a place that we’ve had more potential than we’ve shown and certainly, as of late, we’ve been able to pick it up. We just have to tweak a little bit and make it better.”
No matter the results on Sunday, Buescher can take pride in how far the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team has improved over the last two years. Team co-owner Jack Roush, who has endured the highs and lows of the sport, wanted to ensure that his young drivers take pleasure from their accomplishments.
“Jack said this two weeks ago, he said he wants to make sure that everybody takes this in and enjoys it because it has been a great year,” Buescher said. “We still have work to do and that all comes down to tomorrow. Obviously, this round hasn’t gone nearly as smooth as we had hoped so far, but it’s been a great season for RFK and for us on the 17 side.
“I’m very proud of everything up to this point and beyond, so we can certainly make it a lot better here tomorrow, but right now you look back on it and this was our expectation for ourselves. We knew it was gonna be hard to do that, and it was, but we’ve certainly been able to get to a place where we expected ourselves to be able to get to at the beginning of the season.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
