Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Bristol Night Race Media Availability — Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, September 18, 2026
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Kroger/Kool-Aid/Little Bites Ford Mustang Dark Horse for RFK Racing, stopped by the Bristol Motor Speedway infield media center before today’s practice and qualifying sessions to talk about this weekend’s race.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Kroger/Kool-Aid/Little Bites Ford Mustang Dark Horse – AS POORLY AS THE CHASE HAS STARTED FOR YOU, IT’S NOT AN ELIMINATION RACE THIS WEEK. HOW DOES THAT CHANGE THE PSYCHE OF HOW YOU APPROACH THE CHASE NOW? “I appreciate you not being blunt (laughing). This format, like we talked about all year long, is kind of what I hoped we would see more of that gives you a reward for an entire season’s worth of work. Yes, it’s definitely not started off like how we wanted it to and we’ve got to turn that around. We can do that here, for sure, but I think it is important to note that the reason why I’ve been such a big proponent of this is simply the fact that while the Daytona 500 does not mean as much by the time we get to Homestead as it would through just a 36-race season, it’s mattered all the way to making the Chase and then the entire Chase is gonna matter as we get down to Homestead. We’ve kind of used up our mulligan early and we’re gonna have to get away from that and get on track and be strong, but it doesn’t mean that because of two races that don’t go well that we’re done. I think that’s another appreciation for the format and the way it rolls out, so we have our work cut out for us. We’re certainly aware of that, but we’re not completely out of anything yet.”
YOU GO FROM 70 TO 111 POINTS BEHIND AFTER TWO CHASE RACES. HOW MUCH OF A BIGGER GAP DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE AT NOW VERSUS TWO WEEKS AGO? “I would say that we knew coming into the Chase that we were gonna have to win races. We have watched race wins turn into 55, 60, 70 point swings for drivers, so ultimately that’s kind of where we figured it would be anyway. We’re starting further back than we thought we would be at this point, so it’s about winning ultimately, and you shouldn’t win the championship in this format without winning races. I don’t think it’s gonna happen that way. It’s very rare that it’s happened at all, so being that’s the case and we’ve realized that, we have a lot of good tracks coming up for us. We’ve got a lot of mile-and-a-halves coming up that were really strong at the beginning of the year for us – Bristol, Talladega, whatever you put out in front of us, I feel like we have weekends where we can go put massive points on the board with strong days and have chances to compete to win races. We just have to take a little bit of a reset after a few rough weeks and no better place to start that than Bristol. We’re keenly aware of the uphill battle ahead of us, but I think the old saying that winning fixes a whole lot of things, and I believe it would in this situation as well. We’re just gonna have to do it multiple times.”
HOW HAS THE RACING AT BRISTOL FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR RACE CRAFT OR JUST HOW YOU SET UP PASSING AND GO ABOUT RACING? “I would say some of the unknowns on what we’re gonna deal with for any given race weekend have kept us almost guessing on what that weekend is gonna look like since we had the extreme tire fall off race we’ve come back here and thought we were gonna deal with that and tried to save tires and one or two cars would start ripping the top and try to make some headway and the next thing you know they’re paying no penalty for it and we’re all sitting here like, ‘Man, we missed the boat. We should have done that way earlier.’ In general, though, Bristol has a very similar feel that it had when I remember racing here in 2014 or ‘15, that you can rip the top a lot of times and you can make a lot of headway up there, but when the groove gets dominant, you have to be good on the bottom. I’ve never raced here in the old-school Bristol ways of having to root somebody up off the bottom as the only way. I’ve never been in a wedge-bodied car around here either, I’ve just kind of missed that era, so it’s always been very similar to what it is now for me, and with that it means that we have to be able to run the bottom. I think you have to figure out how to run right around the bottom of one and two. Three and four is a little hard to pull off sometimes, but the top is a little easier in three and four, so if you can keep your momentum wound up, I think that as long as you have passing lanes, you can still do it. It kind of goes through cycles of whether that shows up quick on restarts or not. I’m happy to see the O’Reilly cars ripping not quite up to the fence, but up there in the ground concrete because I think if they’re gonna keep widening out, hopefully by the time we get to our practice, we won’t have everybody slammed on the bottom and it won’t get too dirty before we’re able to widen it out. So, I really hope we just have a wider racetrack because I do feel like that has been the most run races that I’ve gotten to run here at Bristol.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON KANSAS NEXT WEEK? “I am kind of driving off the hoodpin right now, so I am very much on Bristol. I would say that as we look ahead the mile-and-a-halves were really strong for us at the beginning of the year. I’d say that Kansas has become very quickly one of my favorite mile-and-a-half racetracks to go to. It’s gotten so much character through the years the last several years seems to have accelerated. We have options as a driver to move all over the racetrack. We qualify around the top, which is very strange in general for qualifying anywhere really. There’s a lot of things about Kansas that have just presented a pretty unique challenge that’s become a lot of fun, so given how our speed was at those style of racetracks earlier in the season, we haven’t had one in a bit, but certainly we’ll be looking forward to that one after taking home a trophy from here first.”
YOU GUYS ARE RUNNING SUB-15 SECOND LAPS. DO YOU FORESEE A POSSIBILITY THAT THERE WOULD BE A SUB-14 SECOND LAP HERE AND IS THAT PRETTY MUCH LARGELY DEPENDENT ON THE TIRES? “Yeah, I would say that a 14-second lap around here is ripping. To go a half-second faster would be significant on a half-mile racetrack. I don’t believe you’ll see us get there. I would say you’re probably a couple of limits. One, we’re not using a ton of brake here at Bristol, especially on our fast laps. We’re using a ton of throttle, but I think more horsepower would be the only way to get it up out of the hole faster, but I would say that you’re correct in saying that really it’s gonna have to come from tire and grip, or simply downforce. With the simpler package that we have, the simpler diffuser package, it’s definitely taken a little bit of speed out of it already. We’re pretty low on total downforce numbers as we sit. It would take significant aero or grip advantages, so pretty much the basics. I don’t know if you could get there simply with tire. I think you would have to have more downforce in order to rip that much faster around this place, but that being said, it’s not that I don’t see where running a 13.9 around here is gonna create anything better than what we have, either. It’s not simply about the raw speed of it. I promise it feels plenty lap late into a run when you’re still running a 16-second lap around here. A lot goes wrong in a very quick hurry and it keeps us on our toes, but I guess I doubt. That’s my long-winded answer to say I doubt we see it go that much faster.”
ARE YOU A DESPERATE DRIVER RIGHT NOW? “No, we’re not desperate. We’re just going to be aggressive. We are in a point where we have everything to gain in front of us and we really don’t have much to lose at this point. That’s the unfortunate truth of how our Chase has started, but, no, it’s not to the point of you consider ourselves desperate or throwing any kind of Hail Mary. We can take risk and chances and we can push forward, but I would just say that we get to race harder is ultimately it, and maybe not even harder than those who are sitting there in the points. They get to race hard, too. No, I don’t think it changes most of the mindset, it just opens up some options for us and our team on how we approach some of these things – options we would have rather not had, but we do have now.”
ARE WE 100 PERCENT CERTAIN THAT THERE WILL BE NO TIRE WEIRDNESS WE’VE HAD THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS? “What do you think? I’m curious. I can’t sit up here and say 100 percent that, yes, we’re beyond all that. I doubt it, but I’ll give you a better answer in an hour or two. It remains to be seen. I don’t know where everybody else’s head space is at in that part of it, but I can’t say for certain, no.”
HAVE YOU HAD ANY CONVERSATIONS WITHIN YOUR TEAM OF WHAT THAT CAN LOOK LIKE, OR ARE YOU JUST GOING OFF THE SPRING RACE? “I would say that if it turns into anything like that, we seem to have enough tires. We have pit crews that are ready to have 10 pit stops on the day. I’m glad this racetrack is not loud. We’re OK. If we had to get down to that, if we had to be on pit road every 50, 60 laps, then we have people that are ready for that challenge and we will change what we need to, but I would say that is not our belief – it’s more on the side of you’re not gonna see issues to that extent.”
HAS YOUR TEAM DETERMINED WHAT CAUSED THE BRAKE ROTOR TO EXPLODE LAST WEEK? “I don’t know that we have a full answer yet. It seems to be very similar issues to most that had issues. What I will say with us is I saw a couple of the Front Row cars seemed to have an idea they were having a brake problem. Both of them were around us when it happened and started laying up on entries and trying to kind of baby it a little bit. We didn’t have any warning. Everything was fine. I think the 12 car was in a similar situation. The rotor actually exploded down the straightaway before braking, which is very strange in general. I’ve never had that before. The only thing I can say for sure is that we don’t know for sure, but we have a handful of common denominators across the failures in the garage. We have thought processes of sitting there under a red flag and everything super hot and it starting to cool down. I’m aware of that. I’ve had issues of similar sorts in my ARCA days and I learned from those way back when that you just don’t sit there and stay put. You have to keep moving forward and trying to rotate hot spots basically on the entire system – tire, brakes and all. We try not to run all of our cooling fans under caution because you know it will just shock a system, or under red when you’re sitting. I don’t have the solid answer, but I know it went in a grand fashion. We were I guess consider ourselves lucky in the sense that we were still on the straightaway and had time to process what had just happened and did not try to drive down into the corner. I kind of just let it ride the wall. Obviously, it was just a tough end to be three laps away after having a brutal day in the first place – not how we wanted to finish that at all.”
CREW CHIEFS WILL HAVE MORE LATITUDE ON DECIDING WHEN TO PUT ON SLICK OR WET WEATHER TIRES. AS A DRIVER, IS IT A GOOD THING DOING IT THAT WAY? “I like it. I think it makes us weigh risk versus reward. I guess it kind of starts to mimic the road course procedures in the sense that we’ve been aggressive on that. We’ve hit it really well and in Mexico City we hit it completely wrong. I think that it’s just an opportunity to try something different, to make a gain or a risk in a massive area that can play out. So, yeah, I think it’s a good thing to give it back to teams. I think that the start of the race will ultimately be determined, so we’re not gonna change right from the get-go, but I think it gives us time that no matter what the conditions are, we’ll be able to feel the racetrack out, have a general sense before we swap over in anything, and then we just kind of play it by whatever our teams sees fit to change from there.”
