It was not a moment that Chris Buescher, nor anyone who’s followed NASCAR for the last decade, was used to.
Watching Buescher watch other NASCAR Cup Series drivers attempt to knock him off the pole position in qualifying.
But that was the case Saturday (April 30) at Dover Motor Speedway, as the RFK Racing driver stood next to his No. 17 Ford, waiting.
Waiting to see if he would claim not just the first pole of his NASCAR Cup career, but his first NASCAR pole period.
It would also be RFK Racing’s first Cup pole on a non-superspeedway track since 2013. Back then, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle were still Roush drivers and Buescher was just a team development driver splitting time between the Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series.
So, six years after Buescher’s lone Cup win to date and after 232 Cup starts, Buescher had a target on his back.
“There was some pretty awesome emotion from it,” Buescher told reporters Wednesday (May 4). “We waited around for a really long time (in the first round) and realized right then that our lap was gonna hold up pretty good. I stayed in the car because I was too nervous to do anything different. I was like, ‘OK, I put up a good lap. I’ll stay in the car and we’ll see how the rest of the field goes and, if need be, we can go back to the hauler.’ But I ended up staying in it through both groups and right up to our next lap.”
After his final qualifying run, the No. 17 team was “watching, paying attention” to the rest of the cars making a run, “but didn’t turn the SMT (data) on.
“We were sitting there talking about it. If we had SMT and we were sitting there watching, I don’t know if that would have made the nerves better or worse. If you’re sitting there and knew that you had him off of (Turn) 2, but they gained into three and see if you can get ‘em off of four. It was a little easier for us to just watch the monitor up top and see them come across the line and watch the…
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