Buescher, who had a breakout season last year with three wins, had hoped to already have a win in hand this season. However, despite coming excruciatingly close, he remains without a victory with four races left in the regular season.
Entering Sunday night’s race at Richmond (Va.) Richmond, Buescher is still in contention for a playoff berth based on points, but his situation is tenuous.
He holds the 15th spot in the 16-driver playoff grid by 10 points over Ross Chastain with Bubba Wallace the first driver outside the cutoff, 17 points behind Buescher.
A win in the next four races locks Buescher in the playoff field and he would much prefer that route to join his RFK Racing and co-owner Brad Keselowski in the title chase.
Chris Buescher, RFK Racing, BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang
Photo by: Nigel Kinrade / NKP / Motorsport Images
“I’m not nervous about it,” Buescher said Wednesday. “I’m pretty adamant about it – I don’t want to change the way we approach our races. I’ve just seen it too many times in our sport where you try and get put back on your heels and change up what you’re doing, and it can end up costing you.
“We’ve got to race our races, put our best foot forward and that should be enough to get us where we need to go. “We’ve got to be aware (of the points), but it’s not something that we’re up in arms about or worried about.”
A perfect opportunity to return to VL
The schedule offers Buescher and his No. 17 Ford team a rare opportunity.
Of the next four tracks – Richmond, Michigan, Daytona and Darlington – Buescher won on three of them last season on his way to a career-best seventh place finish in the series standings.
“That’s a pretty awesome statistic as we look at it, but last year’s results don’t equal this year’s,” he said. “We’ve been very good at a lot of different styles of race tracks. We’ve been very close to locking ourselves in.
“We’re plenty capable of progressing and winning a race here in the next four like we have been. We’ve just got to clean up and have a couple things go our way and just do a good job and control what we can from our side.”
It was one year ago at Richmond that Buescher kicked off his remarkable run of three wins over five weeks that gave him a rush of momentum heading into the 2023 playoffs.
To repeat that victory of a year ago was going to be difficult enough but circumstances have also changed in this…
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