Buescher On Playoff Push: ‘Lot Of Good Tracks Coming Up’

Chris Buescher (Nigel Kinrade/NKP photo)

CONCORD, N.C. – For the last three years, Chris Buescher has been no stranger to facing adversity when it comes to making the NASCAR Cup Series playoff grid late in the regular season.

Four races before the first round of the playoffs this year, the Prosper, Texas, native is in the same position as he’s been in the past.

Bubba Wallace, another cut line driver prior to Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Sunday, won the Brickyard 400 to punch his ticket to the postseason, shuffling the cut line significantly.

Buescher sits 42 points above his RFK Racing teammate Ryan Preece and currently holds the final spot on points. Despite another regular season coming down to the wire, Buescher remains confident entering Iowa Speedway this weekend.

“We have a lot of good tracks coming up. Iowa was really competitive for us last year. We ended up having a tire failure there, but we were running very well at that time,” Buescher reflected. “We then get to go defend our win at Watkins Glen. We've also been able to win Daytona before, and our superspeedway program at RFK has been really strong for a long time.

“Richmond is the other one where, when we won there, it changed my opinion on that place. I used to despise Richmond with a passion, but we’re in a better place there now,” he added. “So there's nothing coming up at us that I'm worried about. I feel like we have four chances to win … and I've been really looking forward to this stretch for a long time.”

Buescher has a combined three wins, five top fives, 10 top 10s, and 152 laps led in the Next-Gen era between Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l (Aug. 10), Richmond (Va.) Raceway (Aug. 16), and Daytona Int’l Speedway (Aug. 23) that come in the three weeks following Iowa.

Last year at Iowa, prior to his tire failure, Buescher led 16 laps in the Cup Series’ inaugural race at the Midwestern short track. Additionally, as the defending Watkins Glen winner, in the Next-Gen era Buescher has 15 top 10s on road courses since 2022.

“I can navigate right handers better than a lot of guys around in the Cup Series. Obviously, we’ve been competitive at a lot of them. We’ve been close but we’re chasing [Shane van Gisbergen] this year, that's for sure,” Buescher said. “Last year at Watkins Glen, we had a really good car there that took a while to get going. Our long run speed was really the perk there, and the way the race played out, our long run speed worked out.

“We had some good strategies as well, and with the handful of restarts, we were still able to go toe to toe with Shane there. We’ve seen some separation between short and long run speed at some tracks, and The Glen was probably the largest offset last year,” he added. “I don’t know if that’ll be the case this year, and also, we don’t really want it to be that large.

“We need to figure out how to start off a little bit better, and that’s probably our bigger focus right now.”

The 32-year-old will be banking on finding that long run pace, as he hasn’t finished inside the top 15 at the last two road races this season bewteen the Chicago (Ill.) Street Course and Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.

The sense of urgency comes from the playoffs nearing, but also due to the potential within his No. 17 team.

Last season he was the highest ranking driver in the point standings that didn’t make the Cup Series playoffs. Due to Chase Briscoe’s walk-off Southern 500 win and Harrison Burton’s Daytona ‘Hail Mary’ late in August, he was pushed out of a spot.

With proven speed, Buescher feels he can make a strong playoff run, but it’s all about getting into the 16-car field first. His quest toward cementing his stake in this year’s playoffs during the final month of the regular season starts in Iowa.

Coverage of the Iowa Corn 350 powered by Ethanol begins Sunday, Aug. 3 at 3:30 p.m. ET on USA, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.