Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has been Ford Racing’s top finisher in each of the last two NASCAR Cup Series races, including last Sunday’s event at Texas Motor Speedway in which he was fifth.
COURTESY OF FORD RACING
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has been Ford Racing’s top finisher in each of the last two NASCAR Cup Series races, including last Sunday’s event at Texas Motor Speedway in which he was fifth. Buescher heads to Watkins Glen International this weekend only two years removed from his win at the historic facility. He spoke about getting back on the road and his hopes for Sunday’s race earlier this afternoon as part of a weekly Ford Racing media call.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN THE FORD SIMULATOR YEARS AGO WORKING ON ROAD COURSES. HOW MUCH HAS THAT HELPED BECAUSE YOU’VE BECOME ONE OF THE MOST CONSISTENT DRIVERS IN THOSE EVENTS? “That was a long time ago. I remember when the Ford simulator was pretty new and a lot of our veteran drivers weren’t really keen on spending much time over there yet, there was a lot of open windows. There were many eight hour sessions spent over there just across the street getting to know a lot of racetracks that I hadn’t been to before O’Reilly or Cup racing at the time. And then trying to figure out how to be better at the types of racetracks that we don’t get to see that often and that’s road courses for us. We’ve spent our fair share of time over in the simulator through the years. We just came from there this morning. We were over there for four or five hours to start the day with all three of our teams. We still use it pretty religiously to hone in on how to be better at these things and I’m excited to be heading into Watkins Glen. I would be a little bit more excited if it was drier, but that being said, we’re hoping for a nice window and maybe we can catch a little bit of a break along the way. It’s such a fun racetrack. I love that place. It was my first race and we’ve had success and won there with BuildSubmarines.com on board, so they’re with us again. Familiar colors would look good in a familiar place parked there in Victory Lane, so I’m ready to head up north.”
TEXAS WAS A SELLOUT LAST WEEK. WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THAT BECAUSE THERE WERE SOME ROUGH YEARS? “That’s a good question that I probably don’t have the most sophisticated answer for, but the racing at Texas has continued to improve. As we’ve seen time and time again with repaved racetracks, the first couple of years are just tough. There’s so much grip in one lane and just that lane that the racing takes a hit for a little period of time. It’s aged. I’m sure it has nothing to do with triple digit figures during the summer out there, but it’s aged enough now to where it’s moved around. We’ve got a couple of lanes to race in. We had three really good races out there, and I think the Trucks and the O’Reilly race put on a show and with those being entertaining it helped invite more people out for Sunday, and we had beautiful weather. We finally had a weekend in Texas that was not 98 or not 40 and it just made it to where it was nice to be at the racetrack to be able to put on that show on a nice weekend. On the other side of it, it’s a weekend that wasn’t the opening weekend of hunting season in Texas. That’s probably hurt us through the years as well, so no matter how you look at it, and I know that would have been the fall, but I think we had a handful of scenarios finally go our way, and I think the racing product has been steadily improving, and our mile-and-a-half racing in the series has definitely improved as well. It was really neat to walk off the stage for driver intros and see so many people in the seats and ready to go already. That was a much needed turn for Texas Motor Speedway. Like I said, I’m happy to see the hometown crowd show up.”
DID YOU HAVE THE NEW TIRE PACKS ON YOUR SIMULATOR MODEL? IF SO, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT? “Yes, we did. I certainly understand what we’re after. All of the rumble strips did not cut it. It just did not do enough to keep us off the run out areas and what the run offs were doing was creating these really tight moments when everybody merged back on the racetrack and was creating these massive accidents. Will this fix that or will it have a massive accident because of a tire pack? I don’t know. I would say I like the one off of the carousel more. I’m kind of a proponent of physical barriers and if we’re going to put a wall there, then we might as well put a wall there and say that’s it. With the sporadic tire packs, it’s worked at a lot of places when they’ve been used more for the apex, not so much as an invisible wall in between a handful of them. I’m not saying it won’t work. It’s kept us exactly where they want us to be in the simulator. The idea behind it is at least working right now, but we’ll have to see how it works in practice once we get everybody on track. I like what we’re doing. I’ve joked about wishing it was just gravel still, but I do understand that we don’t want to slow our show down like that time and time again. I get how we’ve gotten to where we have, but I do think this is a good attempt, and I hope the result is positive like we believe it will be.”
YOU MADE YOUR TRUCK DEBUT AT THIS TRACK. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT GETTING BACK IN A TRUCK AND DOING MORE OF THOSE RACES? “I would love to do it again. I had a great time with the ThorSport bunch of there. I’d say I almost had a great time. I had a great time for short stints. Obviously, we had some mechanical failures that plagued us through the weekend. We had some supplier issues that got us and that kind of took a lot of the fun out of it, but my first laps in the track on track I was laughing inside the truck. I was like, ‘Man, this is a great time. Why have I not done this before now?’ I did thoroughly enjoy that, and I would love to give it another go again. With this race coming up so early in the season and trying to stay all systems go right now, it would have to be the right deal that doesn’t require a ton of extra work to dive off into to get ready for, so as not to take away from the Cup program right now. Certainly, it’s on my radar and I’d love to do some more.”
AFTER THE RACE YOU SAID YOU THOUGHT WATKINS GLEN MIGHT BE KIND OF A QUESTION MARK. WHAT DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE MISSING? “I may have misspoke a little bit because I think Watkins Glen is more of the one that has been steadily good for us, and COTA on the flip side has been the one we’ve always gone into a little bit unsure of where that puts us, so just to clarify that. That being the case, the Glen is kind of its own animal for road course racing. We’ve kind of established that. It’s so fast. I think that we’ve had something that’s worked well there. We’ve changed what we’ve taken to the Glen pretty significantly and still been able to go and win a race and run up front last year and be in a great spot. I do think that we have a very good grasp of that racetrack and are able to make several different setup options or race car builds work at that kind of racetrack. We’ve kind of touched on both sides of long run and short run, and maybe that’s what I was trying to allude to was trying to find that balance in the middle of how do we fire off good, but also maintain the long run pace. That’s been some of our focus this go round and obviously now we’re gonna be paying attention to weather and if we need to be thinking about what can work on a wet tire because there are some things you can dive off into if you believe that’s what you’re gonna be up against right now. It’s been a good road course to us for a good, long time now, so I am really excited to head back up to that one. I’m ready to get up there. It’s gonna be a good weekend.”
WHEN YOU DO FILM REVIEW FOR THIS WEEK IS IT MORE USEFUL TO GO BACK AND LOOK AT FILM TO WHEN YOU HAD GRASS AND SAND TRAPS KEEPING YOU IN THE RACING LINE AS OPPOSED TO ANYTHING FROM THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS? “We’re actually getting ready to dive off into that in 15 minutes, so we’ll stick to previous years because the track limits are changing there are some things we will dive into, but the vast majority of the things that you need to know are how does the Next Gen race race car race there? What has the racing tire and the fall off looked like there? What does the racing product look like? And with those that are on-track and that you are having to race with, what does that look like? Ninety-five percent of what we need to be studying is what happened the last go around, but there are things that we do believe track limits will change. You will not have that infinite run off of turn one to be able to roll the outside and defend as well, I don’t think. I think you’re gonna have to, I’ll never say concede because nobody likes to give anything around here, but the inside should have a little bit more of an advantage again, just because the outside won’t be able to get off the brakes and roll that huge speed all the way around where there are now tire packs placed. We’ll take a peek at it, but certainly most of our studying will be done on the most recent races.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SCHEDULE DATE CHANGE FOR WATKINS GLEN AND IF IT WILL MAKE ANY IMPACT ON THE RACING SUNDAY? “It certainly could. If it’s just nice and cool up there and we get a nice window in, will the fall off look like significantly less than last year? There’s a good chance. I had the opportunity to go up to Horseheads with a lot of folks from Watkins Glen last week and we did talk a good amount about the schedule and time of year and what that looks like for the race, for the fans and for everybody coming up. I know Mother’s Day weekend is a strange date to a lot of people up there that it’s been so consistent, but it seems like I know everybody was worried about snow still being on the ground and we’re not gonna worry about that part of it. I think as we head up the temperature is probably the bigger things we’re looking at. I don’t know how much track time other series have had up there with the past several weeks and the weather and the amount of rain they’ve gotten, but I know typically there would have been a lot of people on the racetrack before now, so it’s not like the track would be completely green. I don’t know what that looks like so I would imagine we’re gonna have a handful of laps to figure out what is different from the last go around. I think it’s gonna be fast. I think that’s what we’re predicting. If the track is clean, which we predict it will be, I think it’s gonna be really fast, especially to get going for practice and qualifying.”
THE RACE IS ALSO 10 LAPS LONGER THIS YEAR. DOES THAT CHANGE THE RACE AT ALL? “I like that they added some laps to it. I wouldn’t say Watkins Glen was ever a race that felt like it was over as soon as it started from inside the car. It didn’t feel like a short race, but I like the fact that we’re gonna add some more to it. I like that you put a little bit more physical work in everybody. You change up the strategy, albeit it may not be a huge change, but it’s still something different – kind of like Talladega was where when you make a change that does alter what we’ve almost grown accustomed to or we merged in on a pretty common strategy across the entire field, simply making a change like that can put some people off on two or three or more different paths to try and figure out what they want to race for, and whether that’s ultimately setting up to be able to win a race, or if they feel like the stage points are going to be their play on the day, do those 10 laps change that enough? I don’t have that answer yet, but certainly just with those extra laps and that change it has the potential where it can move some things around and sometimes it can be in a rather large way. Obviously, the Talladega stages were a massive departure from what we’ve done there, so lots of unknowns, but I like the fact that it’s a little bit longer. I think the little bit of fan sentiment that I’ve seen today, that people are kind of realizing it’s 10 laps longer, has been pretty positive as well, so I’m here for it.”
YOU AND RYAN CAN BE A COUPLE OF PRANKSTERS. AFTER SUNDAY’S INCIDENT, WHY IS RYAN PREECE NOT A GUY YOU MESS AROUND WITH? “I’m not afraid of him. I’m gonna go prank him again. I’m gonna go see what else I can dive off into as we watch it out here. I might go roll his windows down in the parking lot and see if I can get him a little fired up. Obviously, the on-track stuff is outside of my normal grouping, but that’s part of the fun of racing is we all take this very seriously. We’re here to figure out how to win races and we’re around each other every week, so you never know what’s happening at different times.”
IS THERE A LINE THAT YOU DON’T CROSS WHEN YOUNGER GUYS ARE COMING IN AND MIGHT OVERSTEP FROM TIME TO TIME. THE VETERANS MIGHT FEEL A NEED TO REIN THEM IN. “I’m trying to think when I came in if I ever got a stern talking to from anybody through the years, and I don’t think I ever did, and I don’t think you ever knew exactly if there was an invisible line or not. But you came in and we’ve all been racing our entire lives and we’ve been around, obviously this is the absolute top of motorsports in the country and we’ve been around Saturday night short track racing, and everybody’s view on how we’re supposed to race each other can alter, but, for us, there’s no system. It’s just emotions.”