Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Ford Racing Media Zoom Call
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is coming off a sixth-place finish last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He currently sits ninth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings as the circuit heads to Darlington Raceway.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT DOES A SIXTH-PLACE FINISH AT LAS VEGAS SAY ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED VERSUS JUST HAVING A GREAT FINISH, AND HOW DO YOU LOOK AT DARLINGTON? “Darlington is very separate from Las Vegas, I believe. But starting with that one, I’d say that the beginning of the season is, in a way, strange right now with superspeedways, road course, Phoenix is somewhere between a short track and not, but it was hard to get a read on where we felt like we were at to fire off the season. We’ve been kind of looking to get through the Phoenix and Vegas swing to understand and so, for us, I think that coming out of Vegas with a strong day, not a real strong practice for us, but the team did a phenomenal job. We got the car underneath us for qualifying and was able to get a good pit stall selection, a good start to the race and just steadily work our way through it. The pit crew did a great job. The whole team fired on all eight the entire race and just had very good execution, which put us in the hunt for a top five. We faded a little bit in the last 15 or 20 laps, but it was a really strong day overall. Obviously, we can see we’re gonna hunt a little bit more speed yet. We’re not completely where we want to be, but it was a solid first real mile-and-a-half to get our bearings about us and understand where we feel like we’re sitting at, and I felt like it was strong. To tackle the Darlington side of it, we’ve got a lot more questions than answers right now. With this package, with the limited amount of sim that we’ve tried to do and tried to understand, predicting fall off to be several seconds to the point where we don’t think we’re gonna have to count on two hands, but we might max out one. It’s gonna be big from that side of things and it’s gonna certainly change the race and how we approach it and how hard you want to push. Can you conserve the tire enough to survive late into a run? It’s the shorter Darlington race, but, that being said, it’s still gonna present a lot of challenges that Darlington has come to present all on its own, and now we’re tacking on the horsepower, the less downforce, and the higher falloff tires, so lots of excitement going into this one, lots of hope to see some really unique, good racing.”
CAN YOU SET THE SCENE FOR THE FANS OF DARLINGTON BEING SPECIAL AND IS BIFFLE GOING TO BE RIDING WITH YOU THIS WEEKEND? “We had a good time cruising with a Roush-charged Mustang down to Darlington. It’s a wonder we didn’t get pulled over. I know better nowadays. I drive and F-350 every day because, let’s be real, I’m not gonna get caught running triple digits in a truck that won’t allow you to run that fast. I know my limits nowadays, but, aside from that, we have the three Biffle memorial paint schemes or throwbacks if you want to call them that. For all of our cars to be able to do that and for Fifth Third Bank to be open and allowing us to take their branding and turn it into a remembrance for the Biffle family altogether is truly special for us. We certainly want to go make big things happen for everybody. We had a real neat moment in Daytona with all four of our cars getting to run the stylized font, but this is something that I wouldn’t say as big of a surprise to me as the rest of the industry, but I certainly didn’t see it coming and it’s a pretty neat opportunity for all three of our RFK drivers to be able to do this and carry Biffle with us.”
DO YOU THINK DARLINGTON COULD RESEMBLE BRISTOL IN TERMS OF TIRE FALL OFF AND DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO BE A TRACK TEMPERATURE-SENSITIVE THING? “I would not predict it to look like Bristol one way or the other. I know Bristol has been all over the map, but I think what we are going to have is going to be less based on how quickly the tire shreds or grinds away and more versus how the tire falls off on a pace aspect as it gets hot, as it gets slick and almost slimy, and as we get down to some wear indicators. So, I don’t think it’s going to be weather sensitive nearly to the extent that you see at Bristol. I don’t think it’s the same challenges that we’ve had there. I think you will see it to where if it’s, which it’s looking like it’s gonna be really warm, I think you’re going to have a lot of fall off in speed, a lot of movement in the race cars. I think you’re going to – BK was making jokes about needing more tires, but also maybe needing more toe links for the field because it’s just going to be that difficult to drive. That’s our main prediction versus just wearing them out that quickly. When we’ve had our most accelerated wear at Bristol, the pace has stayed really high all the way to the point where there was just no rubber left. I don’t predict that’s what you’re going to see when we get down to Darlington.”
COMPARING THIS TO PAST DARLINGTON RACES SINCE THE NEXT GEN CAR HAS COME OUT. IT SEEMS LIKE YOU GET TO A CERTAIN POINT IN A RUN AND IT’S VERY DIFFICULT IF YOU’RE UP ALONG THE WALL FOR THE CAR TRAILING TO GENERATE ANY KIND OF MOMENTUM TO COMPLETE A PASS ON THE INSIDE. DO YOU EXPECT THAT TO BE DIFFERENT? “That will still be there, just in the sense that everybody is going to be grip limited at the tail end of the run. I think our hope is that you just see it at different rates. If somebody is going to go be aggressive and really push hard and just wear out tires early, the hope is that you will see them fall off three or four tenths harder over the last 15-20 laps of a run versus somebody that just tries to be more consistent throughout the entire thing. I would say that if you have two cars that battle it out from the green flag until a green flag cycle, and are both pushing extremely hard, you’re going to see a minimal difference in fall off, which I think is not going to lead to those two cars being able to trade places as easily at the tail end of a run versus somebody that’s not pushing as hard early. That’s my prediction. I don’t know if that’s completely accurate, but, ultimately, we are all going to be grip limited. You’re just going to be looking for some amount of clean air, some amount of grip on the racetrack. We’ve seen the bottom, what you would almost call the apron of three and four come in in year’s past. That’s hard on tires, but it is gripped up because it’s not been run in so hard through the years, so is that an option for a couple laps? Probably. Is that somewhere you’re gonna run an entire run? I would say very unlikely, so there are some options at Darlington for sure. Like I said at the beginning, I think we have a lot more questions than answers right now, and I’m excited to see how that all plays out. Fortunately, all of our RFK Fords are in group two, so we get to watch that first practice and take notes or point and laugh or whatever it may be that we’re doing, but we will be watching with a sharp eye for sure.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE IMPROVED ON THE 1.5-MILE TRACKS, ESPECIALLY WITH KANSAS COMING UP IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? “I think Kansas is the one that we definitely feel like Vegas should relate to the most. I think Vegas has been our weaker mile-and-a-half through the years, so we’re very hopeful that that means when we come to Kansas that that one takes a step up as well. We’ve been really good at the mile-and-a-halves the last couple years, but last year was stellar. Our qualifying efforts were unreal year over year. I would say I struggle with my qualifying most of my career and last season we killed it in qualifying all year long. Everywhere we went, so that was awesome, and now we just have to equate that to how do we balance all of that qualifying speed to race speed throughout a run, and I think we’ve had great fire off at some of those races, and we’ve had great long run speed at others, we’re just looking for that balance in the middle. Vegas was interesting because I feel like we had a good car that fired off, restarted well, and then didn’t fall off too hard throughout the entire run. Now the last run we pushed hard and paid a price, but with that exception, the entire race our balance didn’t change very much through runs, which gives me that much more hope that when we get to Kansas that we’re gonna be good throughout an entire run, which really should put us in the hunt to win races. We’re ready for some more mile-and-a-halves because that was certainly a strong suit for us last year.”
WHAT KIND OF TRAINING PROGRAM DO YOU HAVE TO PREPARE FOR RACING? ARE YOU JUST FARM STRONG? “That’s what Newman used to always tell us is he slings hay bales around. I called him a liar a lot because I know he had a tractor and I know he was using a bale spear, so, that being said, yes, we’re not lazy during the week. We have a lots of chores to do around the farm, but we also have a very good group around us at RFK that not only us three drivers, but all of the pit crew members. We have a very nice human performance center, a gym that is very, very nice, very new to us. It’s taken a big step in the right direction. We have Les (Ebert), our trainer, came over from the NFL world about right after I got to Roush, so it’s probably 15-16 years ago now, so we workout with him several times a week through strength and conditioning. We have a nutritionist. We have all the tools to dive into, so I can’t speak for the other Ford teams, but I know that it is a big deal to us here at RFK that we do try to plan out for these races knowing that it’s gonna be hot in Darlington. It’s a physical race. We have done studies on expenditures during races to see. We burn similar amounts of energy or sometimes more in the case of like a Bristol than those running a marathon. There are some really interesting data that we’ve picked up through the years and has really changed how we approach races now. I will certainly say that my rookie season I was not prepared to go 500-600 miles in a race, or well beyond that, but I’m at a point now to where I’m glad to say when we get done with any of these races, whether they’re hot or whether a cool shirt stops working, whatever it may be, we get out of the car and take a breath and walk back to the hauler and feel good about it. It’s something we take very seriously, but it’s more internal to RFK Racing. That’s the only real program that I know.”
DOES THE SIM HELP WHEN PREPARING FOR DARLINGTON AND CAN YOU PROGRAM IN THINGS LIKE TIRE WEAR AND SUSPENSION IN THE MIDDLE OF A RUN? “Yes. We get a 25-minute practice when we get to Darlington and we are told which adjustments are illegal for us to even make. We can’t lift all four tires off the ground during practice at any given time, so it is important that we get as much info as possible ahead of time. Is that difficult going into a weekend where we have as much new as we do this go-around? Yes. So, do you feel like you get to run in the simulator and believe 100 percent of what you get out of it? No. I don’t think that’s fair, but I don’t think any organization, manufacturer, team, whatever it may be, is going to say we believe 100 percent, but there are certainly things that we take away from that that we believe to be accurate and maybe directionally correct and are able to apply that towards setting up for the weekend. So, yes, it is a crucial part of how we prepare for any given weekend, and how we work to make our program better after any given weekend. We have weekly time slots that we are in there to constantly work on trying to improve our on-track performance, so the most basic way to answer that is yes, it is very important to how we approach our race weekends and how we get better.”
THERE WAS A GATHERING OF DRIVERS PAST AND PRESENT AT RFK ON TUESDAY TO HONOR JACK. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? “I could talk way too long on this subject because I’ll start with where you ended. I’ve been under this roof in these four walls at RFK for over half of my life at this point. I got here as I was almost 16 years old because I had a handful of people that took chances, believed in me and pushed me to get to this point. That was Ken Ragan, David Ragan’s family took me in and really helped me kind of find my way in North Carolina and pushed me in the door here to meet Jack Roush and Robbie Reiser, who kind of looked through past results. I didn’t have the credentials to walk in these doors. I’m not gonna lie about that. I walked in and said, ‘Look, I’m willing to put in the work to get there and figure out how to win races here.’ And that was something ultimately that Jack signed off on and said, ‘Yeah, I want to do this and I want to take that chance.’ Did a year-and-a-half go by where Jack called me Kevin? Yes, but did it get to the point where we got through ARCA, some of the driver development programs with the Roulo Brothers up north, with working in the shop here. I remember 2013 I had seven races planned in an Xfinity car here and kind of laughing at Jack’s bootcamp now. It used to always be for those that wrecked race cars and tore stuff up and they got sent to the shop to figure out how to work on them. I had to go beg to go work in the shop because I was gonna be bored at seven races, so I’ve seen this place through a lot of different eras. I’ve seen it from all the different departments. I’ve seen the amount of people that have been here for 22, 25, 30 years under Jack’s guidance. I’ve seen it evolve and get back to the point now where we are in the hunt to win races. We fell a little short last year, but for many years I’ve been able to win races consistently, not as many as we want, but getting back to a point where everytime you see Jack he’s smiling, he’s cutting up, he’s telling stories and that’s really rewarding to be a part of it at this point, personally and selfishly. The second part is yesterday’s quarterly lunch that we did, I did not know all of that was coming, so walking in and seeing Mark Martin here, and Carl Edwards, and David Ragan, Jamie McMurray and listening to the stories. Ricky Stenhouse, listening to the stories that everybody had with Jack and realizing that not a single driver came in these walls with a very storied background or a whole lot of credentials either. Jack was a firm believer in developing people. That’s evident in the drivers that ultimately have become Hall of Famers of our sport, that have all been able to win races at the top level of NASCAR all came in these doors here with Jack willing to take a chance and put in the development. You don’t see that everywhere. That’s not the story of any other team in the garage. That means something. That’s special to Jack’s legacy. That’s special to me personally. It was special to hear those stories from all of those drivers that had the same story. To hear Mark Martin tell that in the same way that I just did about himself, knowing that Mark Martin was the driver that I looked up to as a kid was really special. It was neat to see Jack. I think he really enjoyed it. He was smiling the whole time. It was a really good time and what was an hour lunch was very soon over two hours of a gathering for everybody in the shop. I think we got to really get a great appreciation for what Jack has done for our sport as a very broad overreaching whole, and also for all of us as drivers and people that have worked here their entire careers, it was really neat. It was very interesting. It was fun to hear stories. He’s a special guy and has taken very good care of a lot of people through the years.”
