Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Ford EcoBoost 300 Advance – Homestead-Miami Speedway
Friday, November 20, 2015
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang, holds an 18-point lead in the NASCAR XFINITY point standings going into tomorrow’s Ford EcoBoost 300. Buescher held a Q&A session in the Homestead-Miami Speedway media center to talk about his mindset for the weekend.
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS GOING INTO THE WEEKEND? “It’s been a really good season for us. I’m really proud of the work that the guys have put in to get to this point. This is what we were planning on doing at the beginning of the season. We were hoping to be in this position, but it’s not over. We’ve got Homestead left here. It was a really good track for us last year. We ended up finishing fifth, I believe, and it’s one of my favorite mile-and-a-half tracks. I like short tracks are mostly my favorite, but this is probably my favorite of the bigger tracks. The asphalt is worn out. You can move around a lot. It makes for a good race, in my opinion. I have a lot of fun racing here and I think a lot of people do, so it makes it a good finale for us. Our guys have been working really hard to make sure we’ve got something to come out here and get another top-5 with this weekend. I’m looking forward to getting going here. I’ve had a blast this year. It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve got a couple wins and been in position to get a handful more and we’ve got to close it out at this point.”
DID YOU EVER THINK YOU WOULD GET TO THIS POINT OF THE YEAR AS THE POINTS LEADER? “After the end of last year, I knew we were capable of getting to this point. We had a great, great run at it the last 10 races. It was really good momentum and I knew if we could build on that coming into this year that we would definitely be in contention for this and we did just that. We fired off really well this year and we’ve had great consistency throughout the year. Like I said, we’ve been in contention to win a lot of races and it’s exactly what I knew we were capable of doing and just had to execute, and we’ve done that. So, yes, I expected to be somewhere near this situation and the guys have done a great job to make sure we haven’t had any mechanical failure or anything along the way and we’ve stayed out of trouble up to this point. Knock on wood, we’re doing alright at the moment.”
THOUGHTS ON A CHASE SCENARIO POSSIBLY COMING TO THE XFINITY SERIES? “I don’t know how far along that is, but I have mixed thoughts on it. From one side, I look at what it’s done for the Cup Series with the excitement, the drama and the coverage that it has brought to that series at the end of the year – the last 10 races. Everybody talks about Daytona, the season-opener, that’s the big one. That’s when we get the most coverage. We really announce ourselves being at the beginning of our season, and when you look at these last 10 races and what the Chase has done for it I think it has made it something that people will tune it to watch and really pay attention to, so from that aspect I think it would be really good for our series. I know there are a lot of different rules in there that say what it would do with guys coming down from the Cup Series and how the eliminations would work if it would be the same or a little different. On the other side of it, the point standings that we have now is how we grew up. It’s how all of the guys in the garage grew up, even on the Cup side. This is what they’re used to. You raced every weekend and did as much as you could do every weekend to make sure that when you got to the end of the year you were where you needed to be. I think from that side of it, it makes a full season more important. It makes putting together the whole package a little bit more important, but I understand the Chase was done to capitalize on wins and really make sure that everybody was racing as competitively as possible towards the end.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED — YOU RAN SOME CUP RACES WITH FRONT ROW EARLIER THIS YEAR. ANY PLANS TO DO THAT NEXT SEASON? “We don’t have anything planned for next year. I did get to run, I think it was six races what it ended up being, and I had a blast doing it. It was an awesome bunch of guys over there, had a lot of fun, and learned a lot as well. I realized real quickly how busy double-duty could get for a weekend in running back and forth between the garages. That made me give a lot more respect to the guys that do it every weekend and are constantly running because when you get out of the car, I remember Fontana was the first one. You get out of the car and there’s five minutes between XFINITY practice and a Cup practice and the garages seemed like they were a mile away there. It was a busy weekend. I was wore out by the end of it, but there’s no plans to do it next year, but what I got out of it this year was invaluable.”
ARE YOU THINKING WITH AN 18-POINT LEAD MORE DEFENSE THAN OFFENSE? AND HOW ARE YOU HANDLING THE PRESSURE RIGHT NOW? “If I told you there was no pressure, I would be lying to you. We’re handling it as best as we know how. I think I’m a pretty laid back person and pretty calm. I can handle that part of it. Scott is the same way, he’s very calm. We’ve been able to get places because of that during weekends. When something doesn’t go exactly right there’s no blow-up, there’s nothing that’s gonna turn a bad weekend into a catastrophic one, so that’s been a huge part of our success this year. So I feel like we can handle the pressure at this point. We want to be here. It’s not by accident. It’s not something we’ve just backed in to. We’ve earned the right to be here, and going to your next question, in a way, we’ve earned the right to be a little bit more defensive this weekend. We’ve worked hard enough this season and we’ve done better than anybody else to get to this point, so we can go out here and we can race to make sure that we don’t put ourselves in a bad position. That being said, we’re not coming here to finish 13th, which I think is the lock-up spot. We’re not coming here to just aim for that. We’re coming here to run like we did last year and get a top-5 out of this thing. If we can do that, obviously the points will fall wherever they will and we’ll be just fine. It’s still a race weekend. We’re still coming out here to get our Fastenal Ford up to the front and have a good day. I felt like this was a race last year that was probably one of our better three or four races of the year, and if we can be anything like that this year we’ll be in really good shape and might actually get another win out of this season.”
CAN YOU ELABORATE ON SPONSORSHIP FOR 2016? “I’m optimistic about it. I feel like we’ll have something come to, I just don’t have anything right now. We don’t have everything planned out at the moment. It will be a couple weeks, I’m sure, before we get everything lined up and get a little bit closer – not that I’m worried about it – but we’ve got a job to do at hand right now and we’re gonna take care of that first and then we’ll be able to see what we can get for next year, but I feel pretty confident that the guys back at the shop are doing everything they can to get sponsors on board and to try to put together a 2016 season wherever that may be.”
HAVE YOU REACHED OUT TO RICKY STENHOUSE OR CARL EDWARDS, WHO WON XFINITY TITLES WITH ROUSH FENWAY AND HOW TO DEAL WITH PRESSURE SITUATIONS? “I have talked to Ricky quite a bit just talking about this weekend and obviously he’s been in this situation twice in this series and he’s come out on top twice. He’s probably been in contention more than that, but he said that he was behind one year and he was ahead one year and he gave me the different scenarios and how they were able to accomplish the seasons and how they were able to pull it off. I know Scott has talked to Mike Kelley as well a little bit just trying to figure out what they did to make it all work. Mike is the one who actually said, ‘You all have earned the right to do what you need to do this weekend. You don’t have to go win the race, you’ve earned the right to be where you are. You have worked hard to get to that point, so you can go out and do whatever you need to do to wrap up that championship and think big picture.’ So we got a lot of advice from them and I think that’s gonna help a lot this weekend.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED — WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE NOT ON THE TRACK TO STAY MENTALLY BALANCED? “We do a lot of meeting during the week to figure out what we’re gonna do for the next one. Obviously, our debrief meeting is on Monday and we’ll come in and try to figure out what we did here last year, what we’ve done at different tracks this year that have worked well for us and what we can apply. We’ve watched old race tape. We’re just trying to do everything we can to focus on the weekend and make sure that we do as well as possible. I think all of that helps. It’s no different than what we do every weekend. It’s not like we’ve changed what we’ve done now, now that we’ve gotten to the end. This is what has gotten us to this point is working as hard as we have, so it’s gonna be really important to make sure we stay focused all weekend and pull this thing off. Beyond all the meetings at the shop I’ve been doing a little bit of yardwork, just trying to relax a little bit and not worry too much about it, just trying to get it all in line and wrap this thing up. The pressure and the stress and everything involved, I’ll feel much better once this weekend is over.”
WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT SUCCESS AND IS THERE A YOUTH MOVEMENT IN THE XFINITY SERIES RIGHT NOW? “I think it’s a great bunch of drivers in our series right now. There’s a ton of competition. During the teleconference I thought it was funny because somebody asked Chase what his advice would be for me and he was like, ‘I’ve got nothing for him. We’re chasing him. We’re not gonna give it away.’ That’s the answer I expected. I’m not faulting him for that at all, but we have very good drivers in this series right now. It’s been very competitive over the last several years and it’s a lot of guys I’ve raced with since Legends car days. I’ve run with Ty since he was in Legends cars, ARCA with Ty and Chase, and a lot of others through the field as well. It’s a bunch that’s been around for a long time. I remember being 12-13 years old with the same bunch just trying to get to this point, and a lot of us have been really fortunate and lucky and worked hard to get to this point and we’re able to put on the same shows here as we were back then, so it’s a nice sense of accomplishment to get as many as we have up to this point and I think it’s gonna show in years to come. We’re starting to see a handful of guys getting out of this sport that have been in it a long time. I remember watching Jeff and Tony when I wasn’t even old enough to be at a race track. I was sitting at home on the couch watching on Sundays, so it’s cool to have the depth in the field that we do to be able to fill in those gaps as they come up.”
HOW HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR APPROACH TO RACING SINCE LAST YEAR WHEN YOU MISSED THE RACE AT DAYTONA? “We did not change anything until probably about 10 to go. We raced the first two-thirds of the season trying to get all we could get every weekend and when we realized it had worked to the point where we got ourselves in to a very good position coming down to the last handful we’ve had to change a little bit. We haven’t taken the unnecessary chances. I think you go back to Bristol, having a little hiccup in the fuel on a green-white-checker. That was a risk at the time and it almost paid off really well, but it did not. Luckily, we were able to finish it off and come home with a tenth. That was an eye-opener for us. We realized that we had to be a little bit careful as we came down to this final stretch to make sure that we were gonna be there at the end. So from that regard, we’re trying not to be four-wide on some of these restarts. I know that’s been some of the craziest times during any of our races in the last couple years, and trying to make sure that we’re not speeding on pit road. I got caught at Kansas, I believe, and realized how far back that set us, so I’ve tried to make sure that I’m a little bit on the conservative side and 50 rpm the length of pit road isn’t gonna be much. You’re not gonna lose big-time there, so it’s an easy way to be conservative without just backing way off – just small things like that that are gonna help us as we come down to the end.”
