Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
NASCAR Zoom Media Availability | Thursday, July 15, 2021
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang — THOUGHTS ON WATKINS GLEN? “I’m excited to do that. There are a couple different things there. The Glen, for one, the fan turnout at the Glen has been incredible for I don’t know how many years now, but as long as I’ve been going in the Cup Series I feel like it’s been sold out. I was very disappointed to not be able to do that last season for our fans that do come out and participate and camp and tailgate and party and sit in the grandstands. To be able to have that coming back, like you said, in just a handful of weeks now I’m pretty excited for that because I feel like that’s an area that has really supported NASCAR as a sport and we weren’t able to bring it to them last season. On the more personal or 17 side of things, I think we’ve been looking at road courses as pretty good opportunities for us this season. Road America wasn’t as strong as we had hoped, but I do think that we’ve been working hard on Watkins Glen. We feel like it’s a place where we should have pretty good race cars. A lot of the different things that we’ve worked on for our road course racing over the past year-and-a-half now should show up, so there’s a handful of things that we feel like are going to give us a good opportunity to gather a bunch of points, but ultimately try and win a race.”
HOW DO YOU SIZE UP YOUR PLAYOFF CHANCES? IS IT A MUST-WIN SCENARIO FOR YOU? “Yeah, more than likely. I think that was probably our worst-case scenario at Atlanta was for Kurt to be able to win that race as far as our playoff scenario. More than likely it’s a must-win. There would have to be some really solid stages and races, and probably a little bit of bad luck on some of the guys that we’re racing at the same time, so that’s how we’re looking at it. For us, that kind of opens up some opportunities. It’s kind of a double-edged sword. We’re not in it, so that’s not the good part, but, at the same time, it does let us go out there and be a little bit more aggressive again, trying to take some chances, take a little bit more risk, run a little bit harder at times, and to get back on track where we were before Nashville and before having a tire cut down there. We’ve kind of been on a gradual slope downward since then, so it’s time for us to recover. Hopefully, Loudon is the recovery for us and gets us going before the two weeks off, but the road courses are something we’ve looked at as a pretty big positive to be able to do that for us.”
THE BIG NEWS TODAY ABOUT KESELOWSKI LEAVING TEAM PENSKE, HAS THERE BEEN ANY INSIGHT OR DISCUSSIONS ABOUT HIM JOINING ROUSH FENWAY NEXT YEAR? “I guess to start off, I’ve been in the sim since 8 o’clock this morning, so I have no clue what the big news was, but I think from looking at the talk that’s been around, I don’t know where it lies yet. I don’t know exactly how that’s all gonna play out at the end of the day. I don’t know what changed today yet, but, for us, I won’t say it’s business as usual because it’s been a rough month for us and come back to the competition side of things, ultimately, we’ve been trying to get everything turned back around for us. So, a lot of the chatter or a lot of the extra stuff that’s been going on in the background or around us has really been muted out and ignored from our group as we’ve tried to be heading toward the playoffs right now. That’s our focus and maybe as things get a little further down the road and everything progresses and we get some concrete word on what’s going on, then we’ll have a lot more to talk about.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS WEEKEND? “I’ve been in simulation all morning, so a lot of that was Loudon and trying to make sure we’re competitive with our Fastenal group. A lot of it was Watkins Glen and I made my first laps around the Indy Road Course and hit about everything, so that’s been my morning. I guess I missed out on some pretty big news. I like Loudon, but it’s not been my best racetrack. It’s something that we’ve worked hard to get better at it, and I will say that it’s been a really big focus at Roush this year has been trying to figure out how to get our 750 short track program on the up and up, so we hope this is the one that turns it around for us and we get to come back and say we did it, and, if not, we’ll keep our heads down and stay after it.”
