“We just haven’t finished the way we’ve ran. We’ve been running really strong; just don’t have the results to show for it. Gotta keep building on Kansas and go from there.”
Coming off of his championship last season, everybody thought that James Buescher would come out of the box strong this year, ripping off top 10 finishes. However, the season hasn’t started like Buescher and team would have wanted.
“In the races we haven’t finished in the top 10 we’ve had more bad luck then you can imagine,” he said. “We’ve finished on the lead lap every race even though we’ve had things thrown at us – getting wrecked by lap cars and just not having things work out our way at Daytona and Martinsville.”
At Daytona, Buescher was running up front though made multiple pit stops under a caution at the halfway mark to change the carburetor. He still made his way back up through the field to finish 13th.
At Martinsville, Buescher finished 14th with how the pit stop strategies played out, followed by a 14th at Rockingham. Buescher had been running in the top 10 at Rockingham, though made contact with a lap truck under green flag conditions.
His sixth place finish at Kansas actually marked, surprisingly to most, his first top 10 of 2013.
“The things that we’ve had to do to get the finishes is key,” Buescher commented. “The performance is not reflected by the results. The performance is there. We’ve ran well. We’ve qualified in the top three at every race except Martinsville. We’ve ran in the top five all day each race and I think I’ve led laps everywhere. The performance is there; we just have to have some luck for things to go our way.”
With his strength last year on the mile and a halfs and the top 10 finish at Kansas, Buescher is looking forward to getting to Charlotte later this month.
“Charlotte is a place that I feel like we can go and continue to improve our season,” he commented. “We have some things that we want to try for our mile and a half package. Looks like they’re giving us some extra time so look forwarding to that and possibly improving our program even more and trying to get the first win of the season.”
Having that past success on the 1.5 mile tracks in the past equals confidence and Buescher added that if they’re as strong as last year, he is going o take advantage of that and pick up some wins.
One of the things that has contributed to Buescher’s success is being able to work with his teammates at Turner-Scott Motorsports.
“We’re multiple teams under one banner and some places that works out well where you can work well with your teammates,” he commented. “Other places, your teammate can be your biggest competition. At Turner-Scott Motorsports, we put a big emphasis on working together as one team and I think that shows. At Martinsville, we were able to help each other a lot. At Daytona, we were able to draft with each other a lot.
“Our crew chiefs communicate really well together and help each other with set-ups. If one team is struggling, they’re able to take notes and share with another team. The communication is there and it’s important for us to work together as drivers as we know what each other has – we’re evenly matched and driving the same thing. so we’re able to help each other out and ask each other questions and bounce ideas off of each other and help each other out as much as we can.”
The 2012 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Champion got started in racing at the age of 12 by doing the Lone Star Legends driving school at Texas Motor Speedway.
“I got a bandolero a couple weeks later and it kind of exploded from there,” he commented.
Buescher looks to repeat that same success from last year, though is faced with a new challenge this year with the diversity of the truck schedule. The trucks will race on a road course for the first time since 1996, and will also race for the first time on dirt.
“Having diversity on the schedule definitely makes it more difficult and I think it’s better to have the diversity,” he commented. “At the end when it comes time to crown a champion, you can say that you outdid everybody on a diverse schedule and it shows how strong you are as a driver and how strong your team is. Hopefully we’ll be back up on that stage at the end of the year at Miami and be able to say that we did it again on a more diverse schedule than last year.”
Buescher had the opportunity to go check out the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park road course with his teammates as Nelson Piquet Jr. laid down some laps in a Turner-Scott Motorsports truck. Looking at the track, he says it should make for an entertaining race, but also a challenge on drivers and teams.
“These guys haven’t had to prepare a truck solely for a road course in a long time and on the driver side, a lot of these guys don’t have a lot of road course experience and Canadian Tire Motorsports Park is somewhat difficult track,” he commented. “Overall, it’s not the hardest track in the world, but there’s some tough corners that are off-cambered and blind corners that will jump out and grab some guys. It’s going to be entertaining for the fans, but a challenge for the drivers and teams.”
He added that he thinks his team will have a good package and will be able to pull from their Nationwide Series team with their success on road courses.
As far as where Buescher will be five years down the road, he says he doesn’t know but wants to keep driving racecars.
“I don’t really have a five year plan put together, but maybe in Cup by then,” he added. “I just try to take it one year at a time and this year I am focused on winning another truck championship and we’ll see what happens in 2014 in regards to my career going forward.”
