	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: PENNSYLVANIA 400

August 1, 2016

Long Pond, Pennsylvania

THE MODERATOR: We are going to continue on with our winners' availability here for the 43rd annual Pennsylvania 400, and we are joined by our winning team here. We have Chris Buescher, driver of the No.34 Dockside Logistics Ford for Front Row Motorsports. We have crew chief Bob Osborne and general manager Jerry Freeze.
Let's just start it off with some superlatives. First of all, Chris, you've become the first Sunoco Rookie contender since Joey Logano to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. He did that in 2009. You're the first NASCAR XFINITY Series champion since Brad Keselowski in 2010 to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. So you made your name in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, and now in your rookie season you are a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series winner. How does that sound to your ears?
CHRIS BUESCHER: It's pretty awesome. It's pretty good company, as well. Pretty wild day. Pretty eventful weekend. A lot of things worked out really well there at the end, and some things that I thought were heading in the wrong direction when I cut a rear tire down just trying to avoid a wreck, and we ended up in a good spot there at the end, and Bob made a good call to hold out on the weather and make sure that we could run as far out on fuel as we possibly could, and it worked out really well. The weather got here just when we needed it to.
THE MODERATOR: You're the one to blame for the fog, Bob, or did you have any connection there?
BOB OSBORNE: Yeah, if you want to call it blame, sure.
THE MODERATOR: Talk about what you had in the car today and Chris's ability to get it around for you.
BOB OSBORNE: All in all, we had a‑‑ to be honest with you, a top‑15 place car. It was decent, and it was heading in the right direction from where we were the first race here and for where we are with our program. But with fate really going our way today and calls going our way, which we haven't had a lot of this year, it worked out to put us in position to win it.
THE MODERATOR: Jerry, big win here for the team, and the first since David Ragan at Talladega. What's this mean to your organization to come in here and win at Pocono?
JERRY FREEZE: Yeah, I think it's just a further validation of where Front Row has come over the years. Bob Jenkins, I hate that he's not here. He was at Talladega. I was just talking to him on the way in here. He had some business obligations today.
But he puts his heart and soul into this race team to get it to this point, and we've had a great alliance this year with Roush Fenway, and Bob and Chris joining our team have really had a big impact, and as Bob said we have had no luck at all this year with breaks, and it seems like the last few weeks they're starting to turn our way a little bit, and obviously today we got some phenomenal breaks to be in the position that we were in.
I credit Chris who did a good job to avoid a situation on the backstretch that kind of looked like it was going to derail our day, and 30 laps later all of a sudden Bob makes a call and we got the lead. You can't get a bigger break than that, and Mother Nature smiled on us. But a great day for Front Row, and we really appreciate Chris's efforts, Bob's efforts, and everybody here today.

Q. Chris, can you just talk a little bit about the emotions on pit road while you're waiting for this to be called and it just went on and on? Seemed like it was never going to end. Bob, could you also talk about returning to victory lane and how maybe this is a little more special because it's with a smaller team?
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, we were sitting there on pit road and kind of just waiting for everything to happen the way it's going to. To be quite honest with you, we've had some‑‑ like Jerry said, we've had some awful luck this year and a lot of things not quite go our way, and trying not to get my hopes up because I know just as soon as we would have, that fog would have rolled on out and we'd be restarting again.
Between losing three superspeedway cars at three superspeedway races this year, we find ourselves in a hole in points, and we've been trying to be able to put ourselves in position to win a race to get back in the hunt, and that's exactly what these guys did today. They got a good strategy going that really set us up to be able to be in the Chase here in just a few weeks.
As we're sitting there on pit road, I'm just being a little bit selfish, but doing a rain dance, hoping the fog doesn't roll out, just watching Turn 1, and every now and then I'd see the billboard down there, and just as soon as we would, it would disappear again.
We were joking down there, everybody is asking, what Turn 1, because we couldn't see that one, either.

Q. One of the Vegas sports books had you 1,000 to 1 to win this race. First off, do you know if anybody actually bet on you, and second, what type of odds would you have given yourself, considering you haven't qualified in the top 20 all year?
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I hope somebody bet on us and made out really well. It would be awesome for them.
We had pretty steep odds coming into this one, but we've been heading in the right direction, and there's no mistaking that. We've been qualifying better. We've been racing better. We've had better speed, better averages. We're just getting to the point now where we need to be able to finish them.
Today I think everybody knows it's not just a pure run to the end and all‑out speed. There was a lot of other things going on today.
But you take advantage of every situation that's presented to you, and that's what we did today.
We're going to keep working to make sure that we find more speed and we're able to go win races on days where the track is dry and clear all the way to the checkered flag, and in this case, 160 laps.

Q. For each of you, if you could, how has your assessment of what would make this an acceptable or a successful season changed from when you come in the tunnel to begin the weekend and when you leave here in the rainstorm tonight?
BOB OSBORNE: Yeah, I guess coming into the weekend, evaluating our season and what we wanted to have happen this weekend in particular would be improvement upon the first time we were here and having a better handling race car, having a faster race car relative to the competition and being able to build on that for the rest of the season was our goal, what we were looking for.
We did accomplish that. We had a better, faster, more competitive car than what we had the first race here, so I was happy to see that, and we're going to continue to do that race after race for the rest of the season.
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I think we talked about it at the beginning of the season, and the plan was always to try and make the Chase, and that was the goal. We're that much closer now. Like I said, we've got a hole to dig out of just from Superspeedway racing, but we're in a good spot, and the cars have been getting faster each and every weekend, and these second times around we're going to make sure that we have more speed than we did the first time.

Q. Chris, I know you touched on it already that you're kind of in that hole in points right now. What's the importance of these next five weeks to kind of just make sure that everything goes smoothly enough that you can get yourself into that top 30 and stay there as you prepare for the Chase now?
CHRIS BUESCHER: Surely our bad luck has got to be past us at this point.
We've been seeing a trend in speed through the last six, seven, eight weeks, and we know that we are on the upward climb, and we have been cutting that points deficit almost every week. All we've got to do is just keep doing what we've been doing. We're not going to make any drastic changes unless they're in the right direction. We'll keep rolling with it.
We're in a good spot, and we can definitely make up those six points, and we're going to try and get a lot more than that and be ready when the Chase does start to make sure we can advance as it goes through.

Q. For both Chris and Bob, Brad was talking earlier in the weekend about what it takes for the guys who don't have all the advantages of the super teams, what it will take for them to compete, and he said when he was younger it was really about seeing opportunities and really taking advantage of them when they're in front of you. I guess in the context of that, is it incumbent on y'all to do things that are a little bit out of the box like you did when you stayed out today?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I guess when I cut a tire down under green flag, it kind of forced us into a little bit of a hole to start, but definitely got to build on it from there.
Where we're at in points, we needed a win to be able to keep going forward, and so taking that chance is 100 percent worth it at this point. I was pretty shocked that everything worked out, and Bob was brave keeping us out there on fuel. I know we were going to be running close to empty there with all those caution laps, and glad they did bring us down pit road and wait it out.

Q. Chris, you've kind of been‑‑ there's been more of a spotlight on your fellow rookies, on Chase and on Ryan. Has that kind of helped you out this season where maybe the attention has been more focused on them instead of you, and how does it make you feel when you hear some of your fellow drivers saying that if the race has to end I'm glad to see a guy like Chris Buescher win this race?
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, it's pretty neat to hear that. I've told a couple people, we got to go out to the Las Vegas Cup banquet last year as the XFINITY Series champ and hang out with the '16 Chase contenders, and I got to talk to a lot of those guys and just talk a little bit outside of racing and got some tips, just a lot of good advice, and just good people. It's neat to hear them say that they're happy we were able to pull it off if they weren't.
Going to the Rookie of the Year run, I mean, yeah, the spotlight has been on the 21 and the 24, and does it make a difference to us? Probably not. We're going to keep doing what we know to do, and we're going to keep trying to make sure that we are up there running with those guys every week regardless of what attention to put where.

Q. Does it help maybe ease your rookie season, your learning curve, that stuff, because the pressure is more so on them?
CHRIS BUESCHER: It's been a tough rookie season regardless. It's always that way. Regardless of when you move up to the next series, there's a steep learning curve, and I expected that this season. It's the same one I went through when we got done with an ARCA championship and you move into the XFINITY side thinking there's no problem, you're going to be winning races before you know it, and it's just not the case. It's really, really difficult to do.
We left the XFINITY Series last year, and we knew that it was going to be difficult this year to really get in a groove and figure out how these cars drive differently, and I'm not going to say that the attention or the lack thereof has made it easier, it's just us doing what we know to do and trying to learn each and every week.

Q. For all three of you guys, how do you feel like this affects the future of the team in terms of getting more sponsorship and building Front Row Motorsports to get to a higher level on the racetrack?
JERRY FREEZE: I'll go ahead and jump in. I guess I'm more on the sponsor side of things. Obviously it puts us in a different place, and when you can say and put in your literature that you're a Sprint Cup Series winning team, it certainly gives you a little more clout than otherwise. We saw a bump when we won the race at Talladega a few years ago. It happened to be the very first race that Love's Travel Stops was on our car, and they took a two‑race program that's now a 20‑race program with us, and it evolved over that over the last three or four years. CSX is our other big partner around the 34 program, and they've grown over the years with us. They've been with us for five years, too. So I feel like we do a good job for those partners that we have, and this hopefully will be a catalyst to have a few more that want to come on board and help support our program.

Q. Chris, was it your decision whether you joined Front Row for the season? Did Jack give you or Newmark give you a choice, like stay in XFINITY or go, and if it was your choice, why did you make this choice?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I think we got to the point where we all knew that it was time to try and evolve and keep moving up. It was a good fit to try and use the teams to come together and have that alliance to try and build both programs stronger. I think we see it with all the teams in the garage, the ones that have more cars out there are able to be more successful. They have more notes to go off of.
That's what we've been able to do this year is just to build on it, and with Landon being a teammate, Landon is a different teammate than I've had, just someone who really dissects everything, talks a lot more in depth about what he's feeling, and sometimes a little bit long‑winded on that, but he's a really good guy, and he's been great to learn from. And it's helped me in my transition into the cup side.
I think it's been a great fit. We were obviously able to put everything together to be able to get a win this season, so that's a pretty awesome place to be right now, and now we've just got to keep improving on it and just get through that Chase as strong as possible.

Q. You got your first Cup win before Austin Dillon, Danica Patrick, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, a bunch of drivers, and Kyle Larson is another one. Did you ever think that you would be sitting here before them?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I sure hoped so. It's always the plan and the idea is to get here as quick as possible. You know, it's a different way to do it, and you know, some people won't have the same respect for it, but when you look back, it's just about strategy, and a lot more of the credit for this one goes to Bob and the team for making sure that we were in the position to be able to make the call and be brave.
You know, it's pretty awesome to be able to say that we have won a Sprint Cup Series race. It's pretty special. Been working towards this since‑‑ when we really decided we were going to do this as a career and not a hobby, I was 12 years old. It's 11 years in the making. Pretty awesome to be up here now.

Q. How will you celebrate tonight?
CHRIS BUESCHER: By getting on a plane and going to Utah. We've got a road course school that we're trying to figure out how to be better at Watkins Glen now, so there's no time to celebrate, unfortunately.

Q. If you could just clarify, when you had the cut tire, do you remember around what lap that was?
BOB OSBORNE: Like 92 or something like that. It was in the 90s.
CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, basically getting into Turn 2, it was after a restart or pretty close, and basically a couple guys in front of us got crossed up getting into 2 and out of shape, and I tried to avoid the 44. It was kind of sliding back and forth, and when I pulled down the track, there was a car to the inside a little bit closer than I thought, and honestly I probably didn't need to pull down that far, but we've been hit in the right rear this year before, and that's no better.
It smoked really bad. It actually cut the tire down coming off of 3 as we were hitting pit road, so we got really lucky there for once this season. We got lucky and were able to hit pit road, and then I messed up our luck and I sped off of pit road.
You know, I've got to get a little bit smoother in situations where things don't go our way. I've got to try and calm down a little bit and make them a little bit easier on everybody back on the box.

Q. Bob and Chris, during those six laps after the caution flew and before you guys came down pit road and the red flag, what was the communication like between the both of you and how much was being discussed on the radio?
CHRIS BUESCHER: I think it was relatively quiet, just trying to assess how bad the fog was. I was a little biased, and so from my eyes it was getting worse every lap, and in the spotter's eyes it was getting worse every lap.
It was just trying to figure out how bad it really was and what the chances were. But I'd say overall we're both pretty quiet on the radio, don't say a whole lot, so there was a lot of silence, I guess.
BOB OSBORNE: I did ask him I think the very first time I asked him how the track looked, and he said, oh, it looks okay right now, and I'm like, no, it's raining somewhere on the racetrack (laughing).
CHRIS BUESCHER: That was the first one that went right over my head. Then the spotter communicated that DK couldn't even see us down the backstretch, and it did start getting really bad really quick.
THE MODERATOR: That's a rookie move, by the way.
CHRIS BUESCHER: I know. I'll be better next time.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297