Photo Credit: Jerry Markland/Getty Images North America
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 34 CSX Play it Safe Ford, won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race last weekend in fog shortened race at Pocono Raceway. Now that he has won a race, he is focusing on cracking into the top-30 so he can be in the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the last ten races of the season.
There is no better way to achieve that goal then by racing at a track he runs well on. He is excited the next race is raced at Watkins Glen International Raceway, which is a road course.
“I think it breaks up our schedule and is something different for us all to do,” Buescher said. “We are not road course ringers out there for the most part. There are a handful of them out there that do pretty exceptional compared to others though. Just leaving Pocono it was a pretty awesome weekend and really good strategy on the part of Bob Osborne, due in part to a cut tire early in the race when we were trying to avoid a wreck and ended up cutting a left rear down and put us off strategy. A lot of things came into play and worked out in our favor finally. We have been through our fair share of bad luck this year and that is kind of why we even have to talk about making it into the top-30 in points, because we have had three races that ended in DNF’s and for the most part were out of our doing.
“Two of them we just got hit in the right rear and ruined our day and cost us a lot of points throughout the season. If we look at it now, we are in good shape to be heading forward. Our cars have been a lot better each and every weekend. The last six or seven or eight weeks we have been unloading with a lot better speed and finishing better and staying running better in the race and when we look ahead, after this weekend we are going to a lot of places for the second time finally so we have a good notebook between Bob and myself. With our first year working together we feel like we have better chemistry now and can pick up speed in the next five races leading up to the Chase.”
If the Rookie can keep getting good results and running well then there is no reason why he should not get back into the top-30. He feels like the team should has never been out of it, however, they had a run of bad luck which caused them too. He thinks the win will help turn that around and that he will get more help through the alliance Front Row Motorsports has with Roush Fenway Racing.
“That is a rather small number and we have gone through four this year alone,” Buescher added. “In that circumstance we have just had really bad luck on superspeedways this season. Trevor (Bayne) when we were on our way to Utah to do a road racing class earlier this week said, ‘Man, it just looks like you just need a whole lot of bad luck to get one day of good luck.’ It kind of turned out that way. As we go forward, we have had pretty awesome support from Roush Fenway this year. A lot of the races we have been kind of half-and-half on what we are doing but as we look at the Chase coming up here I think we will be able to try to step up our program as much as possible. I know when we landed from Utah, our 34 team was still in the shop at 10:30 at night to make sure we had the best piece possible for the Glen this weekend. I know the team is working as hard as they possibly can to make sure we are running better.”
The 2015 XFINITY Series Champion says he has been moving non-stop since Monday, but he loves the attention the win has brought to him and his team.
“As far as the week, I don’t think I have sat down in a meeting yet,” Buescher quoted. “We have stayed traveling. We left Pocono and didn’t celebrate the slightest bit and got back to the bus and it was TP’d and we cleaned the toilet paper off after it got rained on. Then we went to Utah for the next day and a half and then came back. I am pretty sure I spent Wednesday and Thursday on the phone just doing interviews straight through to the next one. It is a really good problem to have. I killed my phone batter twice in one day which is a new record for me. It has been wild how everything has played out and I haven’t had time for it to settle in and feel like we won a race. It has been so crazy. We are heading in the right direction now and heading toward that top-30 in points and getting in the Chase. We are going to get there. We have been on the right trend and working toward getting out of that hole we have been in for quite a while knowing that we wanted to get in the top-30 in case something did come up.”
The American driver spent some time with Landon Cassil, Trevor Bayne, Ricky Stenhouse, Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace in Utah at the Road Course Racing School to better prepare himself for this weekend’s race. He said one of the main reasons for him to go was so he could learn a few techniques to help him this weekend.
“It isn’t a think we know we need improving in a certain area, it is just a lot of commitment from Ford to try to improve their road racing program in general,” Buescher stated. “To have a school that we can go out to, we had other drivers that are road course ringers on the Ford side in Billy Johnson who drives a Ford GT and a Mustang. Brandon Davis was out there. He actually ran on the ARCA side with me for a handful of races and is extremely good on road courses. Those two guys out there and a couple of more just trying to help us tune into anything we can. Those BOSS 302 Mustangs are not going to drive like a stock car but at the same time they have lot of different characteristics that are exaggerated of what we would usually feel so you can adjust and figure things out that will play over to this side.”
