Team: No. 17 Socios Ford Mustang
Crew Chief: Scott Graves
Twitter: @RFK17Team, @RFKRacing and @Chris_Buescher
Race Format: 400.2 miles, 293 laps, Stages: 90-95-108
NCS Race at Darlington – Sunday, May 8 at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN, SiriusXM Channel 90
ADVANCE NOTES
Weekend Format
· The weekend at Darlington features a practice session followed by group qualifying, where the top-10 fastest cars in group one will transfer to the final round and run for the pole.
Buescher at Darlington Raceway
· Buescher is set for his 10th Cup start from Darlington where he is coming off two-straight top-10 runs. He ran ninth in both of last season’s events improving his average finish overall to 17.6.
· Prior to last season, Buescher’s top finish stood as 12th (2019 fall race).
· He carries a 23.3 average starting position with a best starting spot of 11th which came in last season’s spring race.
· Buescher also made four Xfinity starts at Darlington with a fifth-place run in 2015.
Scott Graves at Darlington Raceway
· Graves will be on the box for his 10th Cup event from Darlington where he carries a 19.6 average finish with one top-10.
· Graves led Ryan Newman to a P10 finish in last season’s spring race after starting 20th, and otherwise has five-straight finishes inside the top-15.
· Graves also called three Xfinity events – two with Buescher – with a career-best third-place finish in 2016 with Daniel Suarez.
QUOTE WORTHY
Buescher on racing at Darlington:
“Darlington is a very fun track, and the whole weekend itself is really special to be a part of with all the throwback stuff going on. We’ve got a really cool throwback ourselves to our friend Matt Kenseth, and we feel really good about where we’re at heading into the weekend. Dover was a blast for us – although we’re not content – and we know we have more in the tank to keep this thing rolling and keep improving.”
Last Time Out
Buescher finished eighth at Dover on Monday, his best career finish at the Monster Mile and third top-10 of 2022 after leading the field to green on Sunday, his first career NASCAR pole.
On the Car
Socios – the leading blockchain platform for the global sports and entertainment industry – returns as a primary partner for RFK in 2022 on both Ford Mustangs this weekend in Darlington. The company initially joined RFK in 2021 as the primary partner on both cars at Watkins Glen.
This season, Socios owned content centered around the annual Darlington Throwback weekend and allowed fans to vote on their favorite gear and appearance for this weekend’s teams in South Carolina. Buescher and the No. 17 team will throw back to the iconic Dewalt scheme Matt Kenseth ran in 2004.
About Socios
Transitioning passive fans into active fans is essential to the future of sport. Our vision is for an extensive network of the world’s leading sporting organizations to achieve this through Fan Tokens and transactional fan engagement on Socios.com. Fan Tokens, collectible, digital assets minted on the Chiliz blockchain, and the Socios.com fan engagement platform enable the world’s biggest sporting properties to plug into a fan influence and fan reward ecosystem. Socios.com has already generated $120M in revenues for sports teams in 2021. To date, 29 major sporting organizations, including UFC® , FC Barcelona, Juventus, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City have partnered with Socios.com. Leading esports organizations Team Heretics, NAVI, OG and Alliance have all launched Fan Tokens on the platform. For more information please visit www.socios.com.
