NASCAR CUP SERIES: COOK OUT 400

July 30, 2023

Chris Buescher

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by today's winner, Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Fastenal Ford for RFK Racing.

What was going through your head when the caution came out in the final 10 laps?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, inevitable. We knew it was coming. I knew when we started that run, it was winding down the laps from 60 to 40 to 20 to 15, I knew it was coming. Mentally was prepared for it. Knew we were going to be kind of looking at I don't think it was a green-white-checkered but pretty close to it, right?

It's hard from inside to have a good idea what's going on all around the track. Mentally we were prepared for it. I also knew that our Fastenal Mustang fired off so g I wasn't really worried bit either. Our takeoff speed was so good today from green-flag stops to restarts. We were always moving forward. Just a really fast race car that basically made me feel like no matter what the circumstances there towards the end, we were going to be in really good shape.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Do you remember what you said after finishing third here a year ago?

CHRIS BUESCHER: I do not, no. Probably said, Third sucks (smiling).

Q. You said you wanted to fill this place with water or cover it with dirt, get rid of it. To now come back and win this race, does it seem a little bit unbelievable?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, in a way. Yeah, I do remember that. I didn't know that's the quote you were referring to because I feel like I'm going to get some bad looks when I say that.

This is a racetrack where I made my first NASCAR start starting in for T. Bayne here in 2011. That one went okay. Since then, I've struggled here through the years. Have really fought to kind of find our way.

Just felt like it's taken a long time to get my legs up underneath me here, which is surprising because I feel like it's a track that I want to like and have always tried to enjoy. It seems like it sweeps your legs out every time we come here after the first stage. You're wondering what happened.

What I will say is RFK has made some massive leaps. We've been in a good spot the last 18 months. Even I look at the fall race was a huge turnaround for us here last year. Even the spring race was good for us. We didn't get the result we should have, but we were very competitive at times during that race.

I won't sit here and say Richmond is my favorite track right now because it doesn't turn around quite that quick. We won a bunch of races at Toledo, Ohio, ARCA racing, and it still wasn't my favorite racetrack.

It's going to take a little bit more yet. I surely have come a long way here and I'm definitely not trying to sink it into the Atlantic. Big progress.

I think as drivers we like places that we run well at. It surely helps. It's part of the reason why I enjoy road racing or superspeedway racing at times, short-track racing. Bristol has been my favorite track for a long sometime. Always been able to run good there, but this one has taken a little bit more work.

Moving on up. Not quite trying to tear it down at this point. I'm sitting here thinking this is a place that we have great opportunity at, and thought that in the spring. It really is amazing how just a very short period of time can really change your opinion on a place.

Q. You and Scott had success in the Xfinity Series, back together a couple years ago. As much as you're enjoying how your Cup career is going, how much do you also have that sense of satisfaction to do it with Scott?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I mean, if you go back to 2015, we won our championship in the Fastenal Mustang back then on the Xfinity side. We left Homestead and pretty much got to the banquet and pretty much we all knew as a team we didn't have any plans going forward, that nobody knew where they were going to end up. It wasn't a good place for anybody.

It really took away some of the celebration that you wanted to enjoy, when you're sitting there knowing that everybody has to figure out what they're going to do for work the next year.

To be able to reunite with Scott on top of the box, to be able to have that success, to have Mike Herman Jr. on the spotter stand again like we did back then, kind of picking up where we left off several years back now, that gives you a good sense of satisfaction. We're all able to work together and start to recreate some of the successes from back then.

It surely is a big win this time knowing that this gives us a Playoff eligibility. The Bristol win, the night race last year, top of my bucket list. Ecstatic to win that race. The thing that was missing was the fact that we weren't in the Playoffs.

Now we get to go win another Bristol race, that sends us into the next round, that gives us a whole extra level of confidence going into these last 15 races on the season.

Pretty awesome. Pretty solid day here. That was something we talked about at RFK as an organization. We've been very competitive at a lot of different styles of racetracks. We've been capable of running fifth. Not capable of fighting for wins, as many as we had hoped. We've been close at several. Both our cars have this speed at different tracks.

Surely know that we've been close, but we knew it was going to take a strong execution and good pit stops, good strategy, good decisions on the racetrack. We were able to put all that together today as well as having a really fast Ford Mustang to go along with it.

It's amazing how much easier my job gets when we're able to bring these fast race cars to the racetrack. Really proud of everybody at RFK for what we've been able to turn around, accomplish. Really excited to see what's in store for us over the next several months.

Q. Do you like races like this with long stretches of green flag racing, not a lot of cautions?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Definitely have times where I do. When you're having a bad day, all you want is a caution, so... I've been on that side of it at this very racetrack.

Also on the flipside, a race like today, especially when it's hot and you know that it's getting to some drivers, they're having to fight internal battles, as well, I love that. I love that opportunity for us to know that you train for this, you worked hard to be ready for these hot races, these long stretches, you're in as good a place as anybody.

When you have a fast race car, we know we can see things play out when we fire off into some of these runs, everybody on the box has a strategy picked out, that we're committing to, we get to see that play out, not get something to really throw off half the field, like Atlanta when the caution comes at the wrong time, haven't been able to quite cycle everything out, that's very frustrating.

Yes, in a lot of ways I like to see everything be able to play out and take into account all the different aspects of our sport and see everything play out in a way that everybody gets to see their part in it come around and see how their decisions impacted the day and how that got us to Victory Lane.

Q. You were effectively in the Playoffs before today, but now you're in. Has that sunk in that you're in the Playoffs? What does that mean?

CHRIS BUESCHER: It means we don't have to talk about points any more. I love that (smiling). I've been fairly vocal for myself especially, not one to shout, but I hate points racing. I've always hated points racing. I didn't want us to get in that trap that the 17 team was points racing, as we've been heading towards the cutoff for the Playoffs.

I've said that consistently. We've talked about that as a team, that obviously it has to be in the back of our minds because we are in a good spot in points. We've worked hard to have that consistency. But we're not indestructible where we're at, that a win would take care of everything.

That's our sport: winning fixes everything. It fixes the points talk. It fixes morale. It fixes bad weekends. Everything can be changed by winning.

From that standpoint, it's awesome that we are in the Playoffs. That was part of our goal at the beginning of the season. At RFK we talked about winning races, making the Playoffs, and being able to be a contender in the Playoffs. We don't want to be a placeholder by any means either.

When I look at the races we have in the first half of the Playoffs especially, I feel really confident that we can be a contender and we can move forward.

Q. What is the strategy in these final four races leading up to the Playoffs?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, what is going to help the most is Daytona. I've been in the situation, we go to Daytona and you've had to circle it as this is you're last-ditch effort, that we're right on a cutoff, points are going to swing this way or that way, there's going to be accidents. Been in must-win situations for that.

It's not reasonable to get to Daytona and say that this is our one and only chance. We've had a chance to win races all the way up to that cutoff. The industry has. Every team has had chances to win races everywhere.

I feel like sometimes if you go try and points race, you get to the point where you didn't accumulate enough, and you circle that as a must-win, and that's where things can go wrong or mistakes can be made. It just puts a whole lot of extra pressure on everybody for one race that's not really needed.

I think if you approach every race like that's the one you should have circled, it puts you in a better spot there. It's going to get us to Daytona in a place where we knew we were going to have a pretty good points cushion, as long as nothing went crazy over the next couple weeks, as long as we were smart and didn't get wiped out.

We have Michigan coming up. Should be pretty good. Two road courses, which has been really strong for RFK and myself. I have really enjoyed those and feel like we have a chance to win more races before the cutoff.

It lets us go into those and maybe be a little bit more aggressive or take a little bit more chance on strategy. But again, it helps you go into Daytona without that cloud lingering over knowing that anything could happen. You could very easily be wiped out and 15 other cars in one accident, not be any of y'all's doing, and can really shake up our Playoff run.

We're out of that conversation now. We don't have to worry about all that. That's where it's so nice from where I'm sitting, we get to go race the way we talk about racing all the time, but we don't even have to have that little bit of thought in the back of our minds that we need to be thinking about points racing.

Q. It's easy to point to the short tracks as a place where you found some speed. How does that speak to the evolution of RFK the last couple years, how much you guys have improved?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, so I would say it's probably showed up in results, probably stronger short-track racing. Obviously a few wins now, been in the hunt for several. What I'm proud of at RFK as a group is we don't have to just talk about short-track racing. We can talk about superspeedway racing and know we're going to be up front battling for wins, leading laps. We can talk about road course racing and know that we've been very competitive at a lot of those and been battling for wins. We can talk about some mile-and-a-half's and be in the conversation there, as well. Maybe not quite as strong and not have the results, but we've had moments at a lot of different styles of racetracks.

That's what I'm most proud of. It would be great if we just stepped up our short track program and we were competitive at these styles of racetracks. That would put you in a place where we'd be leaving Richmond saying we don't have another shot until Bristol maybe. I don't know what the first one would be. That's not where we're at.

We have racetracks that we're going to be competitive at every week. We do not have to circle racetracks as our chance or this is where we're going to be really good and we're going to have to get through this week. We haven't had that this season. Really didn't have a whole lot of that last season as well.

Now, last season was a building season. It took a lot of work to get there. To see results from all that work is big for us.

The short tracks are where the results are showing up the most, but what I'm proud of as an organization is we have stepped it up across the board every single week.

Q. What is it about this place?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Man, I wish I knew. I would have figured it out a whole many years ago 'cause I've spent more time stimulating this place. I've studied as much video as anywhere when it comes to this win. I just sit here and watch SMT and try to figure out what I've done here for so long.

I just don't feel like I've changed a whole lot about what I do. I think we have better cars at RFK. We've had very good strategy. We've had good pit crews. We've had a lot of things come around. The Next Gen car obviously hit a big reset and kind of the feel and style of racing. Some of that has clicked a little bit better for me at a racetrack like this. Maybe the shifting has changed it. Even today there was large parts of the race where we stopped shifting. I don't know that's necessarily it.

I don't have the right answer for that one because if I did, I would have changed something a really long time ago.

Q. How helpful is this performance to get growth at RFK, especially on the sponsorship and financial side?

CHRIS BUESCHER: Yeah, I mean, we obviously had a large showing of Fastenal guests here, our partners with Navistar here, a massive group from buildsubmarines.com for the weekend. That is huge for us to be able to have a showing like this with everybody here, to just show that we can talk about the progression and we can sit down and tell everybody about what we've done better, what we've invested in, what our tools look like now, how our cars look better now, built nicer. All that is true.

But it has to show up on the racetrack on Sunday. That's what days like today do. That proves we're not trying to fluff everything, that we're legitimate into what we've invested into this program and what everybody is working on to make sure that we are competitive, that we are not okay with running top 10. That's a huge step in the right direction from a couple years back, but we weren't sitting stagnant.

It's special to have such a large presence here from our partners. To be able to make this happen today was definitely big.

Q. What was your track strategy regarding your tires and fuel? Coming from New Hampshire, what was the mindset in terms of getting to Richmond?

CHRIS BUESCHER: That's a good question.

To start with your second question, we found a baseline that's helped us kind of show up every week with something that's more tried and true, kind of trying to tune around that, use our tools to improve on it.

We're not sitting still. What we did today was not what we ran here in the fall, last year. We know that our competition is not sitting still, and we can't either. You're constantly working to make improvements.

Yes, we would go back to New Hampshire and look at some of the things we liked from there, some of the things we didn't. We've looked at things from Phoenix at the beginning of the season. We've had stuff that's come from road course racing that we've been able to apply. There's a constant building process.

It's probably escalated with this car and the schedule that we have with our 20-minute practice sessions. It goes so fast. We're fairly limited - very limited - on what we can actually adjust in that moment or in those 20 minutes. We have to rely on what we learned from the previous race to continue to get better. That's definitely something that we're working on week in, week out. We're constantly looking back at notes from the last race that has anything applicable to this style of racetrack.

When you look at that, then kind of talking about balance and practice, we were in the first group, which was great for practice because we fired off on a green racetrack, put down some stupid fast laps. We averaged out first on long run speed. I'm sitting here thinking, We're in a great race. Then we went to qualify. That group one, the entire group one struggled. That kind of dejects you a little bit. It kind of kicks you right back then.

Qualified 26th maybe, deep in the field. Knew we had a lot of work to do. A lot of it was just understanding that Richmond is one of the most sensitive racetracks when it comes to rubber being laid down, to temperature, to sunlight or cloud cover or even some of the shade that comes over turns three and four later in some of our evening races. It's a very tough track to get a grasp on because it is changing so quickly.

What I will say is our team did a really good job at working ahead of the race to where we did not make large adjustments in the race today. I was very happy with what we had for a short run car, for a long run car, and that they were very much working in very small increments. It's good because we're not trying to take some guesses and some big swings at it, but also it gives our pit crews less to do on pit road, lets them be the absolute best they can be on pit road, as well.

THE MODERATOR: Chris, congratulations.