Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Cook Out 400 Midweek Media Availability
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 RFK Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is the defending winner of this weekend’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway. Buescher participated in a media call earlier today to talk about going for back-to-back wins and improving his standing in the battle to make the playoffs.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW WAS YOUR BREAK AND ARE YOU READY TO GET BACK IN ACTION? “Yeah, we are. It was definitely relaxing and enjoyable. We got to have a lot of fun with the family and got to see people on weekends that usually work during the week, so that was a little out of character for us, but it was a nice break. I got a lot of stuff done around the house, little projects I’ve been putting off and probably about 20 percent of what I thought I’d get done, but that’s about how it goes. I saved plenty of stuff up for the offseason, but we’re ready to get back into it here. We left out of Indy and really didn’t have a good day, so didn’t get to go out on a high note and tried to put that behind us rather quickly so we can reboot and be ready to come back and try to defend this race win for us.”
BEING SO CLOSE ON THE BUBBLE ARE YOU NERVOUS, FRUSTRATED, CONCERNED? WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET? “I’m not nervous about it. It’s something that we’re gonna pay a little bit more attention to as we run down into these final four here, but I’m pretty adamant about it. I don’t want to change the way we approach our races. I’ve just seen it too many times in our sport where you try and get put back on your heels and change up what you’re doing and it can end up costing you. We’ve got to race our races, put our best foot forward and that should be enough to get us where we need to go. Three of the next four races we’re heading into we were able to win last year, so that’s a pretty awesome statistic as we look at it, but last year’s results don’t equal this year’s. We’ve been very good at a lot of different styles of racetracks. We’ve been very close to locking ourselves in, but we’ve been very good. Indy was a rough day for us and ended up losing a little bit throughout the day and had a chance to recapture a lot of what we lost there on the final lap and got dinged again, so just a brutal weekend really. There wasn’t much good to come out of the race itself, but we definitely showed a lot of potential for speed on the weekend, just didn’t get a chance to pull it all out and put much points on the table. We’ve got to be aware, but it’s not something that we’re up in arms about or worried about. We’re plenty capable of progressing and winning a race here in the next four like we have been. We’ve just got to clean up and have a couple things go our way and just do a good job and control what we can from our side.”
YOU FINISHED THE REGULAR SEASON SO STRONG LAST YEAR. WHY WERE YOU ABLE TO DO THAT AND WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS YEAR? “Last year, we had been inching towards that kind of success and finally just fired on all eight when we got to Richmond. We executed that day extremely well from race strategy to on track decisions to restarts, pit road. We finally put it all together and I think that was a big confidence booster for our team as we headed into the next few. We were able to go to Michigan and do the same things, pull off a little bit of strategy there, but also just execute at the highest level, and then Daytona was very much just a team win for us, being able to work together and have Brad and myself together there at the end of the race is what made that one, but it was something that we talked about a lot. The focus this season was to hit that stretch well before now and we come out of Phoenix with a runner-up finish there. We’ve been close to winning a couple others. Obviously, we’re gonna go down in history there on the wrong side of history for a while anyway for Kansas, so we’ve been very good at a lot of these places. We just haven’t been able to seal the deal and it has gotten frustrating. The hard part is keeping everybody’s head up because it’s a hard sport and we know that, but I guess we’re just gonna have to do the same thing we did last year and come to life now and make it a show.”
HAVE YOU WATCHED THE OLYMPICS AND IS THERE ANYTHING THAT STOOD OUT ABOUT HOW STRONG THESE ATHLETES ARE MENTALLY? “That was a really good question keyed up for somebody who should have had an answer, but I did not watch any. I can’t say that have any opinion on it. We just didn’t stop moving. I’m gonna be honest. From the time that we went into break, we were working or traveling and we did not sit still. I never got a chance to sit down and turn the TV on. I think between Emma and myself, I think we may have watched one episode of a show and that was it over the course of two weeks. We really just did not sit still enough to sit down and watch.”
DAYTONA IS THE RACE BEFORE THE CUTOFF. WHAT WAS THE RACING LIKE FOR YOU A YEAR AGO WITH ALREADY HAVE A SPOT CLINCHED BUT EVERY OTHER DRIVER AROUND YOU DID NOT? “I’m sure we’ll run into the same thing. Yes, it may not be the final one, but realistically Darlington has a lot lower chance of producing a new winner. Let’s say that last year was by far the easiest Daytona race that we’ve ever had from the mental side of things knowing that if you ultimately got caught up in something that it was not gonna be a season make or break moment for us. We had already did what we needed to do, but it also enabled us to go out there and be even more aggressive and be able to win that thing. We made big moves that we may not have otherwise, but that was a very nice way to go into it. I sure would like to be in that same situation when we go back, so we’ve got an important two weeks coming up for us. When you get to that race it typically can become just a very crazy event just for the simple fact that there are a lot of people looking for that last chance. I think they are gonna approach it the same way. I think there are gonna be a vast majority of winless teams that are gonna see Daytona as their only chance or by far their best chance and are not going to feel like they can rely on Darlington for that moment. Like I said, I hope we have a win in the next two weeks and it might as well be this weekend, so that we don’t have to have that thought process. If we go into Darlington without our win yet, obviously we were very close last time and with Brad being able to pull off that win that obviously puts us in a good spot and a good mindset going into that one, so I don’t think we would put ourselves on that long list of teams that are gonna be looking at that as a last resort.”
DO YOU THINK THIS TWO WEEK BREAK WILL CHANGE THE AGGRESSION LEVEL? “I don’t think it’s gonna affect the aggression. I’d imagine we’re gonna see more mistakes than we would just coming off a single week. I think it’ll take a little bit to get everybody’s mind back right and whether that’s gonna be hitting pit road in a clean way, restarts, making mistakes, even just last race here at Richmond we had some big moments where drivers completely missed corners on restarts and really sliding up and creating really big moments. I don’t know if that’s just a mental thing that everybody’s got to get back in a rhythm of some sort, but I don’t think that I would expect the aggression to be different as we go into this one. I think you will see mistakes made that wouldn’t be very typical of our field.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE OPTION TIRE BEING USED AT RICHMOND? “I don’t have any good answers for you yet. We have a lot to learn on Saturday. I will say a prediction, just in talking with our team, is North Wilkesboro was the last time we tried this. North Wilkesboro was new asphalt and went into the evening. This is gonna be an evening race, so maybe there is gonna be some discrepancy on the option. I just call them reds and yellows. I can’t keep up. Prime I always think of as the option, so it’s just reds and yellows for me, but for the reds I’d say that if in practice we see speed but maybe blistering, keep in mind that may not be an issue just like North Wilkesboro wasn’t as we got into the race. The Richmond surface is a complete 180 of North Wilkesboro now, so I’d say that a lot of what we knew from there is not going to apply, so we’re really kind of starting fresh on this deal as we get into it. We have a 45-minute practice, so we do get the longer practice on Saturday to learn, and I promise we’ll be taking lots of notes to figure out what we think is gonna happen in the race, but again, it’s gonna be an afternoon, early evening practice in the daylight and we’re gonna be running this race into the night, so it’s not gonna be the best read on what we’re actually gonna see in the race, either.”
WHERE DO YOU NEED TO BE BETTER THAT MAKES YOU THE CLASS OF THE FIELD AT RICHMOND? “We’ve only very recently become good at Richmond, so I wish I could have answered that question a long, long time ago. For us, it’s been a matter of trying to get our corner entry good to where we can be competitive and really hustle restarts. You’re always gonna be tight-center at Richmond, so it’s just a matter of can you be tight and still feel like you’re getting some response out of the car versus just having a numb feeling, and that’s something our team has done a good job of working on and gotten a lot better. Our long run speed has been exceptional when we have tire falloff at Richmond and I think that has been a really big factor in how we’re able to be so good at the two races last year. We didn’t see nearly the falloff in the spring race and with that we weren’t as strong, so trying to figure out if we think it’s going to come back around this go, if that red tire is going to create more falloff like we think it will, like we thought it was supposed to at North Wilkesboro. There’s a balance, but our strong suit has been really long run speed and being able to stay very competitive without suffering on the front end, just being kind of average on the front and that’s been good for us. We were just talking about it. We’ve got some unanswered questions with tire options this weekend, but, for us, it’s a matter of how do we be a little bit better on the front end of a run and not give up on the tail.”
AFTER WINNING AT MICHIGAN DID IT BECOME EVEN MORE CLEAR OF HOW BIG OF A DEAL IT IS TO WIN THERE AND CONTINUE FORD’S STREAK? “I’d say the most unfortunate part about last year was the fact it was Monday because everybody had to go back to work. So many of our partners of the OEM’s for our Ford group had to go back and sell vehicles, so it was different in that sense, but, yes, the feeling, the emotions of winning at Michigan were very largely felt from the Ford Performance side, from Jack Roush and his side, from Brad and his history from Michigan as well. I think everybody I’m surrounded by has deep ties to the Michigan race there and so it was important for everyone and certainly felt the meaning behind that there. So, yes, it’s definitely a big deal. I’m excited to go back and try to defend that one. We’ve made some big gains in the Ford camp in the last several months and I’m excited to see how that can play out at another big racetrack where we know we were able to do well last year.”
DO YOU HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY AN ALLIANCE THAT RFK HAS WITH RICK WARE OR HAAS FOR NEXT YEAR? “I don’t know how the Haas alliance is going to shape out yet. I think I found out just barely before everybody else, just very grainy details right now, but I’d say my role is fairly limited. I talk with Justin and Kaz and kind of go through some of our setup differences – what we’re looking at for different racetracks. We’re over at the simulator kind of crossing paths, not working necessarily together over there, but kind of bouncing off of each other a little bit here and there. We just came out of the gym not too long ago. Kaz is down there getting after it as well, so we’re around each other a lot and just in casual conversations about what we have going on, but I’d imagine on the driver side that my role is probably very, very small compared to what that alliance really looks like when you get down into the weeds of what’s in it.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE MOMENTUM YOU HAVE AT RICHMOND? “I wanted to burn that place to the ground a couple of years ago, so this has been a tremendous turnaround for a facility, to be brutally honest about it, I’ve been terrible at through most of my career. From the Xfinity days, I actually made my first NASCAR start at Richmond subbing in for Trevor Bayne. That one went OK until we lost radios about halfway through the race and ended up finishing pretty bad and then something from there just stayed with me and did not click for a long time. It’s been a racetrack that I really have wanted to like, that I loved running on NASCAR Heat video games growing up. It was a fun racetrack, but just hadn’t been able to truly figure it out until the last couple of years. Honestly, from where I’m at have worked hard at it. There’s been a couple things on my side that have helped. Brad has been a big part of that. Brad runs very well there and has been able to give me a handful of pointers that have led me down a better path, and our team has stepped up in a massive way and brought some very fast race cars that ultimately just make me look better. When we bring those race cars to the track and we’re that competitive off the truck it makes my job a lot easier when I know that we’re in the ballpark. When you’re fine-tuning on a weekend versus really swinging, trying to just get close it really makes a difference on how your entire weekend plays out, and that’s where we’ve been. We’ve been unloading so much closer to where we’ve been able to fine-tune speed into it versus being more in a guessing game.”
WHY ARE YOU NOT A FAN OF POINTS RACING? “That’s a good question because it goes back a long time. It’s actually not from a big miss in my career. From the time I was 12, 13 years old we made very specific decisions that we were not going to race for points. We would be leading track championships or local regional points divisions and would intentionally miss races and go somewhere else to make sure that we didn’t find ourselves in that box. The mindset was that if you race at your same three local tracks and worked hard to win the points there, that ultimately you were racing against the same people every week. Yes, you had something to put on a resume at the end of the year, but what did that local resume accomplishment really do for you in the grand scheme of things. If we wanted to be better, we needed to be around different racers. We traveled out to the west coast. We went to Vegas. This is Legends car racing. We went to Vegas to be around different racers on different racetracks. We came out to the east coast during summer breaks in school and went up and down the coast trying to be around better drivers to purposely try to pursue a way to be better from behind the wheel, instead of being better at our local track. We stayed with that throughout my career. You move up a couple of years, you go to our ARCA championship, we were able to win that not because we points raced, but because we went out and aggressively won races and in our worst days we made sure that our worst days were not catastrophic, that we always had a mindset that in order to be better for the next week you had to finish that race as well, so, yes, it wasn’t a matter of being overly aggressive and tearing your stuff up. You didn’t get down that road and say points don’t matter, so I’m just gonna make a dumb decision. A lot of it is because I worked on my own stuff. I knew how hard it was to fix it, so we didn’t have those moments and then past that it obviously works out. When you win races the points came with it and they always did wherever we were at in situations at the highest levels, whether that was ARCA or Xfinity. Xfinity, we won a couple of races in our championship year, but we were just consistently good from most racetracks and, again, on our bad days we worked hard to make sure we weren’t giving stuff up. I don’t want to go to a racetrack and have a mindset that we’re not there to win, that we’re there to try and capture a handful of points to protect ourselves. I don’t like it. I feel like, to me, it feels like you’re going to the racetrack giving 85 percent and that’s not how I want to go about it. Points have become more and more important and talked about since the playoffs have been introduced I feel like. We really dive into it a lot deeper and it certainly feels like it means more to everybody and I know there are a lot more implications behind the scenes, so you have to play the game a little bit differently, but it’s something I just don’t want to get stuck in the wrong mindset. The one that comes to mind for me, and Bob Osborne was my crew chief my rookie season in Cup. We talk a little bit and some of the times that burn and sting a little bit and going back to the Kansas finish from this year, I was talking to Bob a little bit about that and talked about how painful that is. He reminded me very quickly that he knows how it feels to lose by a very close margin and that Tony Stewart-Carl Edwards battle comes to mind. If you get a little bit too complacent in there and you don’t actively try and go to win the race and put everything on the line, then you can find yourself getting burned on the tail end. It’s just one of the instances that I feel like I’ve seen in our sport where it can bite you if you’re not going to the racetrack and trying to race your race and ultimately to go win a trophy.”
SO YOUR FAMILY WAS DIRECTING YOU AT 12-13, OR WAS IT SOMEONE ELSE? “One of my best friends, Michael Harper, who I ended up traveling with and racing Legends cars. He’d been running Legends cars, building them and setting them up for quite a few years before I started running with him and it was just one of those mindsets that he had seen work out. He’d witnessed drivers basically get caught in a cycle that they became a track champion multiple years and were really good at one specific racetrack, but never got that next chance. They got trapped in a box and I think he’s seen drivers that didn’t have all these track championships to their names, but won races and won them in front of lots of different people that made their way up to the top of our sport. I think it was something that he had an eye for very early on and we trusted in that. It certainly helped get me to this level and not getting caught up in trying to run our two or three semi-local tracks. In Texas, nothing is local, but if we’d have gotten caught in that cycle, I’d ultimately probably be in Texas racing on our local racetracks on Saturday nights. There’s a way about it. It’s challenging. There’s no set ladder in our sport to get to this level. I have a lot of kids or parents ask me how you got to this level and all I can say is be deliberate about how you go about it and hope it works out because there is no solid way to go about it. It was the best way we knew how. I liked it that way and to this day I try not to get caught up in the point side of things too heavily to the point where you feel like you’re not giving your best effort.”
