RELATED: Updated standings | Full results from Darlington
Chris Buescher insists he’s not counting points, not with nine races left in the NASCAR XFINITY Series season. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy his perch atop the standings as the calendar turns toward crunch time.
“It’s not over by any means,” Buescher said Saturday after a scrappy fifth-place finish at Darlington Raceway. “There’s a long way to go and we’re going to have to race ’em hard all the way till the end, but I do like where we’re at. We’ve been able to kind of fluctuate a little bit right in this area this year, and that’s a huge testament to this 60 team, to everybody back at Roush Fenway. They’ve been working their tails off to try to get this stuff better, so we’re in a good spot. We want to get Ford back to a championship this year.”
Buescher, 22, converted his last time out with his first top-five finish in four career tries at Darlington, looking old-school with a damp towel around his neck after a sweltering afternoon of survival. The effort helped the Roush Fenway Racing ace pad his lead from 16 to 29 points over new second-place driver Ty Dillon. Chase Elliott slipped a rung to third place in the standings after Darlington, but remains within striking distance, just 35 points off the top.
The next challenge looming for Buescher is Friday night’s Virginia 529 College Savings 250 (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) at Richmond International Raceway, a track where he is 0-for-4 in the top-five column.
“Circling that one as one we need to try to turn around,” Buescher said. “That was a rough one for us earlier this year, but we have a lot of notes. We have a lot of things that’ve worked really well for us at short tracks since then, so we feel pretty comfortable going back. We’ll have to wait and see, but it’ll be a challenge surely. Honestly, I’m just glad we came out of Darlington with a solid day.”
Buescher will need more of the same at the .75-mile Virginia track, where he wrestled an ill-handling car to a 20th-place result in the most recent Richmond race, posting the No. 60 team’s worst finish of the season. Since that April evening, when he lagged three laps behind at the checkered flag, Buescher has righted the ship with two victories, the most recent of which placed him atop the standings.
To keep the team’s streak at No. 1 intact, crew chief Scott Graves said he’s hoping for another workman-like effort this weekend.
“We’ve spent a lot of time since the last Richmond really thinking about what we’re going to do there and coming up with a plan,” Graves said. “So next week, for sure, it’s really big for us.”
Buescher’s recent results on short tracks offer some encouragement. He prevailed in May at Iowa Speedway, a slightly larger but similar layout, and just last month the Texas native contended for the win at .533-mile Bristol Motor Speedway before running out of fuel on the race’s final restart.
The latter performance showed that Graves isn’t afraid to gamble for victories rather than playing it safe. Even then, he remains cognizant about the bigger picture.
“At this point, I’m always thinking about it,” Graves said of his driver’s position in the standings. “Nothing you can do other than just have days like we had today. If we keep doing this part, we’re going to be fine. We’ve just got to prevent the bad things from happening. We do the best we can to keep it from happening and if we keep it up like this, we’ll be just fine.”