April 30, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Chris Buescher is hoping for a reversal of fortune after winning Dover pole

Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing needed a morale bump—and Chris Buescher delivered with the pole for the Duramax Drydene 400 on Saturday.

Topping the pylon during time trials was a first for the 29-year-old from Texas. While Buescher collected five poles during his ARCA Series tenure, the Cup pole came after 233 starts.

Buescher established a quick lap of 22.479-seconds (160.149mph) after advancing to the final round at Dover Motor Speedway.

“That was obviously an awesome start for our Fastenal group and pretty cool for RFK to get our first pole, my first Cup Series pole,” Buescher said. “It might be my first NASCAR pole, I don't think I ever got one in the Xfinity Series either.

“It is a pretty cool start for us. Practice was very interesting and we had a lot of torn-up equipment. I was watching that with a lot of attention trying not to be one of those.”

William Byron completely destroyed the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet and the team was forced to pull out a backup car. He didn’t bother attempting to qualify. Neither did Harrison Burton, Todd Gilliland or Josh Bilicki following issues during practice.

Although Buescher was 22nd on the speed chart following practice, he relied on his veteran teammate Brad Keselowski for advice at the Monster Mile.

“I was fortunate enough that Brad came over and he was seeing some things and helped me with some of the inputs from inside the car and what we were trying to achieve,” Buescher added. “He went out there and had a really good practice and good qualifying effort as well so we were able to apply some of what he was seeing and it turned out really good for us and our qualifying effort.

“Pretty cool to get it done on the first lap. I think the second lap had more potential. I guess it didn’t need it but I didn’t let them make the adjustments they really wanted to before we went into the second round. I thought it was going to be a little to be a little too conservative but it ended up being enough to hold onto it. A great start.”

Denny Hamlin’s lap was .057-seconds behind Buescher. He’ll roll off second after a rough week—and bad judgment—landed Hamlin in NASCAR-imposed sensitivity training. Hamlin posted an offensive meme of an Asian driver after Kyle Larson wiped out both 23XI Racing Toyotas in the final corner of Talladega last Sunday. Missing out on the pole might not be a bad thing for Hamlin, given that five of the last 10 races have been won by the second-place qualifier.

Larson will roll off third followed by Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suarez, Bubba Wallace and Kyle Busch.

Buescher is still in search of his first top 10 finish at Dover. His best result of 14th at the track came two years ago. He had a consistent run of three-consecutive top-15 finishes before he was wiped out last week at Talladega Superspeedway.

“We are slowly and steadily building up momentum through the season which is nice after a really tough Talladega finish for both teams, us especially,” Buescher said. “We have a lot of laps left to go, but a heck of a start and no better place to see the green flag fall.”