The first round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs was not as comfortable for Chris Buescher as he would have wanted, but now comes a stretch of tracks he can’t wait to get to.
“I am excited for this round because I know we will be fast at all these racetracks,” Buescher said. “If we can control that part of it and take care of ourselves, then it shouldn’t be that stressful on us.”
Buescher had an average finish of 11.3 in the first round. The one blemish was a 27th-place finish at Kansas Speedway after blowing a tire with seven laps to go. It made the elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway much tighter than Buescher was expecting, with only a 13-point advantage.
A fourth-place finish Saturday night got the job done. It is the first time Buescher has advanced into the Round of 12 in two postseason appearances.
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There are three different types of racetracks in the second round: Texas Motor Speedway (intermediate), Talladega Superspeedway (superspeedway) and the Charlotte Roval (road course). All three tracks leave little room for error and can be unpredictable. There were 16 cautions in Texas last season, including for multiple playoff drivers encountering trouble, while Talladega isn’t always in a driver’s control, and by Buescher’s own admission, the Roval is tricky for a number of reasons.
“The way I see it, the superspeedway races always have a certain amount of unpredictability, but where I’m at is I know RFK (Racing) will be bringing fast Fords to that race,” Buescher said. “I know we will be in contention to win it, assuming we can survive the chaos. But I think we have seen that same chaos at a lot of different tracks throughout the year. Bristol last year was a train wreck when you talk about cars falling out and having issues. I promise you, after losing out on a bunch of points at Kansas, it was on my mind going into Bristol, knowing we would be fast but that there was an array of issues that popped up last year and took really good cars and ruined their days and their playoffs.
“I don’t know that any of these races coming up have me any more stressed out than the Bristol race had me going into it. If we can go to Texas and have a good day and have a rough Talladega, then yeah, the Roval will be more stressful. I don’t get too caught up in worrying about it. Martinsville can be very rough. Even Texas last year had a lot of issues, too. I don’t know that there is any one round that looks worse over another.”
Buescher and teammate Brad Keselowski have been two of the fastest on the superspeedways. The duo swept the qualifying races in Daytona last season and Buescher won the regular-season finale in Daytona last month. His average finish at Talladega is 19.9.
Going by the numbers, these three races don’t look good for Buescher. In Texas, Buescher has an average finish of 23.3 and 12.8 at the Charlotte Roval. Buescher has finished in the top six in the last two Roval races.
But history doesn’t mean much with the progression Buescher and RFK Racing have made. This is why he’s not stressed about the second round but views it as an opportunity.
“I think that’s just it,” he said. “I think that’s what is going to make it maybe a little less stressful for us than some others. That can change in a heartbeat with one bad day before we get to the Roval, but as of right now, I am very excited for this round. I feel like all of the racetracks we are going to, out of all the racetracks in the playoffs, Darlington was the one that I felt like we needed the most improvement at, that was going to be tough, and we would have to work really hard to just survive. We went there and ran third on the day.
“I’m proud of what everyone has done to get us to this point and proud to say we will look at the racetracks coming up as opportunities at each and every one of them. I don’t have one coming up that has me stressed out or down about it or thinking we just have to get through it and get to the next one.”