There aren’t many Cup Series drivers who can say they’ve beaten Shane van Gisbergen on a road course.
Chris Buescher is one of them.
The Prosper, Texas, native — who just scored his best career finish at Texas Motor Speedway of fifth last weekend — defeated SVG at Watkins Glen International two seasons ago in a finish for the ages. Van Gisbergen fired to the lead in overtime, but on the final lap, the Kiwi bobbled coming through the bus stop, allowing Buescher to use his bumper and surge for a win in the Finger Lakes.
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Since turning to the Next Gen chassis in 2022, Buescher has quietly been one of the best on the road. The Glen is his only triumph, but over the last 24 races turning left and right, the No. 17 RFK Racing driver has 17 top-10 finishes.
That road course prowess dates back to his O’Reilly Series days and early years in Cup, when Buescher benefited from additional time in Ford’s simulator. While veteran drivers didn’t prioritize that type of preparation, Buescher became a sponge.
“When the Ford simulator was pretty new and a lot of our veteran drivers weren’t really keen on spending much time over there yet, there was a lot of open windows,” Buescher said in a Wednesday teleconference. “There were many eight-hour sessions spent over there, just across the street, getting to know a lot of race tracks that I hadn’t been to before O’Reilly or Cup racing at the time. And then trying to figure out how to be better at the types of race tracks that we don’t get to see that often and that’s road courses for us.
“We’ve spent our fair share of time over in the simulator through the years. We just came from there this morning. We were over there for four or five hours to start the day with all three of our teams. We still use it pretty religiously to hone in on how to be better at these things and I’m excited to be heading into Watkins Glen.”
And that simulator time will likely pay off come Sunday (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Watkins Glen has three added variables for this year’s annual visit to New York’s Southern Tier region: cooler weather, track limits and 10 additional laps.
A shift from the summer to Mother’s Day weekend brings temperatures forecasted in the 60s, which Buescher expects will make for a faster track. As explained in this week’s episode of Hauler Talk, NASCAR officials are adding tire packs in Turns 1 and 5, narrowing the available real estate in run-off areas. And finally, the race distance increases from 90 to 100 laps for the first time, marking the longest scheduled race at the 2.45-mile facility.
“I certainly understand what we’re after. All of the rumble strips did not cut it,” Buescher explained of the track limits. “It just did not do enough to keep us off the runout areas and what the run-offs were doing was creating these really tight moments when everybody merged back on the race track and was creating these massive accidents.
“With the sporadic tire packs, it’s worked at a lot of places when they’ve been used more for the apex, not so much as an invisible wall in between a handful of them. I’m not saying it won’t work. It’s kept us exactly where they want us to be in the simulator. The idea behind it is at least working right now, but we’ll have to see how it works in practice once we get everybody on track. I like what we’re doing.”
But regardless of the variables, Buescher’s confidence isn’t wavering.
“We have a very good grasp of that race track and are able to make several different setup options or race car builds work at that kind of race track,” he said. “We’ve kind of touched on both sides of long run and short run, and maybe that’s what I was trying to allude to, was trying to find that balance in the middle of how do we fire off good, but also maintain the long run pace.
“It’s been a good road course to us for a good, long time now, so I am really excited to head back up to that one. I’m ready to get up there. It’s gonna be a good weekend.”