Team: No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang
Crew Chief: Scott Graves
Twitter: @17RoushTeam, @RoushFenway and @Chris_Buescher
Race Format: 400.5 miles, 267 laps, Stages: 80-80-107
Hollywood Casino 400 – Sunday, Oct. 24 at 3 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM Channel 90
ADVANCE NOTES
Buescher at Kansas Speedway
· Buescher makes his 12th Cup start at Kansas on Sunday where he carries an 18.5 average finish. He’s coming off an eighth-place run there this spring, his second-best result at the 1.5-mile track outside of a sixth-place run in 2017.
· He also finished 10th in the 2019 spring race, and followed that up with a 13th-place finish that fall.
· He made three Xfinity stats at Kansas with a best finish of sixth in 2015 in the No. 60 entry.
Scott Graves at Kansas Speedway
· Graves will call his 11th Cup race from Kansas, where his best finish of seventh came back in 2017 with Daniel Suarez.
· In his first-ever Cup race at Kansas, Graves finished 11th with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He’s coming off a 16th-place run this spring with Ryan Newman.
· He also called three Xfinity races at Kansas – two with Chris Buescher – including a sixth-place run in 2015 and third with Suarez in 2016.
QUOTE WORTHY
Buescher on racing at Kansas:
“We’re anxious to get back on track and turn our bad luck around from last weekend in Texas, where we had turned our race into what was going to be a decent outcome. Kansas is a really wide, fast race track all the way around, and we ran well there this spring finishing eighth. We’re coming down to the end here, and hope to keep building positive momentum heading into the offseason.”
Last Time Out
Buescher turned his day around at Texas and had a solid top-15, if not top-10 run going before getting caught up in a late-race incident with under 10 laps remaining. He would finish 21st.
On the Car
Fastenal returns to the fold at Roush Fenway in 2021 for its 11th season. They spent three years on the No. 99 before jumping to the No. 17 Cup Series entry, and were the primary partner on the No. 60 Xfinity team that captured the owner’s championship in 2011.
Fastenal will feature top suppliers Danfoss, Ingersoll Rand, Georgia Pacific, Energizer and Body Guard on Buescher’s Mustang as he competes this weekend. For more information on these suppliers, visit Fastenal.com, and stay up-do-date on social @FastenalRacing, @Fastenal.
In partnership with the NASCAR Foundation and the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation (MTJF), Buescher and the No. 17 team will participate in the second annual Honor a Cancer Hero Campaign this weekend at Kansas.
M. Andrew Phillips, a native of Denver, Colorado, is a cancer survivor and will ride with Buescher on the driver’s side of the No. 17 car at Kansas. Andy’s father passed away 21 years ago due to cancer, and his wife was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Cancer in 2017 and passed away two years later. Six months later, Andy learned he had the same type of cancer. But, after surgery, chemo and radiation, Phillips is on the upswing and has been raising his 8-year-old grandson through all of it, keeping his positive, and fighter attitude.
Caitlin Meaney, a native of Newbury Park, California, will be honored on the passenger name rail of Buescher’s car. Meaney, despite a heroic, five-year battle with bone cancer, which included six chemotherapy drugs, nine surgeries (eight of which were thoracotomies) and one clinical trial, lost her battle on April 24, 2021. Meaney is the cousin of Tyler Ingleston, who along with his wife Stephanie – current Roush Fenway Racing employee – helped put together this special remembrance. She was 18 years old, and will forever be an inspiration to everyone who met her.
About Fastenal
Fastenal [Nasdaq: FAST] is North America’s largest fastener distributor and a ‘one-stop’ source for hundreds of thousands of OEM, MRO and Construction products. With more than 2,600 stores worldwide, the company supports B2B customers with tailored local inventory and dedicated personnel, who visit regularly, quickly respond to emergency needs, and provide efficient inventory management solutions. Fastenal’s service-oriented business network includes the world’s largest industrial vending program, 14 regional distribution centers, 8 custom manufacturing facilities, thousands of delivery vehicles, and industry-leading sourcing, quality and engineering resources.
