LONG POND, Pa. — The month of May might seem like a distant memory for Chris Buescher. That’s when the No. 17 team was at its peak during the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Buescher was on the wrong side of the closest finish in Cup Series history at Kansas Speedway when Kyle Larson clipped the No. 17 car in a thrilling overtime finish by .001 seconds. With that finish, Buescher jumped to 11th in the regular season standings, the highest he’s been through 20 races this year.
The following week at Darlington Raceway, Buescher was in control of the race with 10 laps remaining when Tyler Reddick attempted a big slide job move entering Turn 3 and pinned the No. 17 car against the outside wall. Buescher needed to pit for a flat tire and dropped to 30th in the finishing order.
Two months later, those near misses sting a little extra with Buescher squarely on the elimination line with six races remaining in the regular season.
“At the time, it was, ‘We’ll move on and get to the next one,'” Buescher recalled of his May misses. “You are certainly starting to look in the rear view and notice those. Again, I don’t want that to be something that we’re hanging on or getting too worried about because we need to focus on what is ahead of us. There is some amount of reminiscing and thinking about what a difference one of those days could have made for us at this point right now.
“We have plenty of racing left to do yet and some good tracks for us. Certainly not in any kind of panic mode.”
Since Darlington, Buescher has three top-five finishes, including a pair of fifth-place efforts at races that went haywire at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway. The No. 17 car excelled on wet-weather tires at New Hampshire to score his first top-five finish at the “Magic Mile.” In the wild, five overtime Nashville race, he was able to surge through the field in the waning laps and avoid multiple cars running out of fuel.
However, Joey Logano stretched his fuel tank an unthinkable 110 laps at Nashville to score the victory. Alex Bowman won in the rain last weekend at Chicago Street Course to punch his postseason ticket. Those two drivers were below Buescher in the regular season standings, but have catapulted above him because of their race wins.
Now, Buescher has a 45-point advantage over Bubba Wallace for the final playoff spot.
“There have been weeks where the races have been chaotic and no amount of strategy set us up to be ready for chaos,” Buescher added. “Sometimes, having a fast racecar, you can’t do anything when the races just don’t play out similar to what you would figure whatsoever. You can’t predict everything and we haven’t been able to and because of that, we’re further behind than we wanted to be.”
Looking ahead, Buescher has some good race tracks on the horizon. He is the defending winner of three of the final six races in the regular season, beginning at Richmond Raceway following the two-week Olympic break. He outdueled Martin Truex Jr. last year at Michigan International Speedway and received a push from his team owner Brad Keselowski to win the regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway.
Those performances give Buescher an added boost of confidence returning. The No. 17 team led by crew chief Scott Graves doesn’t plan on delving too far off from its own strategy. Buescher is eight points behind Ross Chastain for 15th on the playoff grid.
“We will be aware, but I don’t think their [strategy] is going to dictate ours,” Buescher said. “I think what we’ll do is, the more beneficial side of it if someone has an issue on the day, take note of that. If something is not going right, we’ve had to do that once already where you end up with everyone you’re racing around has some bad luck and it’s about making sure you don’t turn your decent day into a bad-luck day as well.”
Buescher will take the green flag for Sunday’s The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway from 18th position. He has a pair of top-10 finishes in 14 starts.