(Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
In year two of the Brad Keselowski era, RFK Racing is hoping to elevate itself back amongst the top teams in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Chris Buescher helped with that effort last season, winning the Bristol Motor Speedway night race. That momentum has carried over to the start of the 2023 season.
Through two points-paying races, Buescher has finishes of fourth and 13th and sits sixth in driver’s points.
He’s still feeling the spark from Bristol, he said.
“It was surely the biggest spark,” Buescher said in a teleconference Thursday. “Bristol was just the time that we finally put it all together and had the most to show for it and showed it for ourselves and everybody else. I think that was the big one that said, ‘All right, we’re in a good spot. We can win these things. Now, let’s figure out how to get more.’”
RFK Racing had a pair of competitive cars at Daytona with Buescher leading 32 laps — most of which came in the final stage. He remained in contention throughout the closing laps and survived for a top-five finish.
At Auto Club Speedway, Buescher “missed it” early in the race but the team made improvements to end with a top-15 result.
The start to 2023 is a far cry from last year when Buescher finished 16th at Daytona and 35th at Auto Club.
“It’s definitely a good start for us,” Buescher said. “I feel like we’re in a good spot to head out west for the next few weeks and keep that momentum going as we come back to the home coast.
“Going out west, last year was especially difficult with the new car and very limited practice. We were fighting a lot of tire issues and we ended up with some really rough finishes out there. Even though we ran better than where we finished, at the end of the day it didn’t set us off on a good start for the year. We’re in a much better place now.”
Buescher’s focus has shifted to Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which he deems as an important early season race.
“Vegas will be very important to look at because it does have a lot of similarities to a lot of the other mile-and-a-halves that we’ll be going to,” Buescher said. “This will be a good test this weekend to see where we stack up, what we need to work on and what we’ve done right through the offseason.”
In 12 Cup Series starts, Buescher has an average finish of 17.5 with a top 10 at the track in 2020. He finished 18th last spring and 15th in the fall — the first two races in the Next Gen car.
Buescher also has a pair of Xfinity starts for Jack Roush — finishing a career-best ninth in 2014.
A win at Las Vegas would be the first for the organization since Carl Edwards got it done in 2011.
(Photo: Cornnell Chu | The Podium Finish)
“We’re trying to figure out how we can get across the bumps,” Buescher said on the rough surface at Las Vegas. “The bumps into one are really rough, especially in this car and so we’ll be focusing pretty hard on those, figure out how to get them better, and then actually some of the wildest restarts I felt like we saw last year came from Las Vegas. We’ll definitely be on our toes for that as well, ready for four and five-wide.
“Vegas is gonna be nice and cool, so speeds are gonna be up. It’s another fun racetrack. We’re able to move around a lot. We have a lot of choices.
“We’ll get a read on where we’re at here and then from there we’ve got to just try to dial it in once we get back to the East Coast and see if we can really start working on it. We’re kind of in a box as we go out west. We just don’t have the ability to tear everything apart and start over that far away from home, so that makes it a little bit difficult, but I feel like we’re in a good place to go out there.”
After Las Vegas, the West Coast swing will wrap up at Phoenix Raceway, where the series will debut a new short-track package.
According to NASCAR, the adjustments “include a two-inch spoiler and the removal of three diffuser strakes and engine panel streaks, [which] will lead to a 30% reduction in downforce.”
Keselowski tested the changes for the organization in January at Phoenix.
“It seems like that the general consensus was everything that was being done was trying to get the cars to move around a lot more,” Buescher said. “I think that’s what we’re hopeful for is harder cars to drive, more movement that will probably come at the expense of some corner speed, mid-corner speed, which is fine. Straightaway speeds will come back up, so I feel like the idea is to try and make the racing better.
“We had our complaints about dirty air being an issue at tracks where we typically did not talk about that, and all these steps were implemented to try and get us away from having those discussions of hard to race around other cars or dirty air being issues at slower racetracks. That way we can get the cars tightened up a little bit, have more passing, and put on a better show at the end of the day and be more competitive.”
Buescher hopes to continue the West Coast swing just as he started it — strong.
