February 24, 2023 | By Lee Spencer

Chris Buescher looks to build on fourth-place result at Daytona

ONTARIO, Calif.—Finishing fourth in the 2023 Daytona 500 still stings for Chris Buescher.

The driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford led a career-best 32 laps in the Great American Race. When paired with his teammate Brad Keselowski, their tandem was stout. 

But once the race was forced into overtime, Keselowski was wiped out and Buescher didn’t have a dancing partner in sight.

“We really made a focused effort to find each other (on Sunday) and do something together,” Buescher said. “We were really fast a lot of the time and were able to lead a ton of laps—and that’s awesome. 

“Even right there at the end it was a matter of just one car length. I was pushing Brad, he got caught up (in a wreck) and I didn’t.”

While Buescher was happy for JTG Daugherty Racing—a team he drove for from 2017-2019—the 30-year-old racer wished he could have been celebrating in Victory Lane instead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

“We did all that we could to get to that point and just couldn’t quite get there,” Buescher said. “There’s a bunch of good people over at JTG Daugherty Racing. (Owners) Tad and Jodi (Geschickter) were really good to me through my years there. Happy for them and all of the Kroger folks, it’s definitely neat.

“But we were so close. We had so much speed between both of our race cars. Feel bummed that we weren’t able to hoist that trophy there at the end.”

Despite scoring his third top-five in eight Daytona 500 starts, Buescher knows there’s room for improvement. Admittedly, there were mistakes on pit road. Playing offense and defense in the draft with a new partner takes time. The RFK drivers are just starting the second year of their relationship, and Buescher plans to review the races before the Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on April 23.

Yet with Keselowski’s success at Talladega—he leads all active drivers with six wins at the track—Buescher understands the potential the teammates have on superspeedways and beyond.

“We had the speed last year a lot of speed between the both of us,” Buescher said. “Then one of us would get caught up in something or the other would and, ultimately, we wouldn’t have that time to work together.

“But that’s the kind of teammate you need at these places and the kind of teammate it’s going to take to win. So, we’re going to keep after it.”

For Buescher, it helps to start the season fourth in the series standings—especially with how unpredictable and grueling the West Coast Swing can be. After scoring a career-best 16th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway in 2021, Buescher blew a tire on the No. 17 Ford 111 laps into last year’s race. He finished 35th. 

Still, 2022 proved to be his best season to date. Buescher won the Bristol Night Race, scored his first career pole at Dover and collected three top fives and 10 top 10s.

“We ended on some positive notes last year, and we were finding some baselines that were working for us at different style race tracks,” Buescher said. “We come into this year knowing we weren’t as good as we needed to be during any of the West Coast swing last year. 

“I do feel like at most of the different style of race tracks we are in a whole lot better place going back this year and are able to work off some of that momentum we ended with and hopefully build on it even more. I definitely feel like we are in a much better place. We've got a lot of chemistry built throughout the shop with all the new employees that came in from different organizations and with Brad coming over into that ownership role. 

“Seeing the progress and excitement and mindset of everybody by the end of the year, being able to sit on pole a couple of races (Keselowski added a pole at Texas), win the Bristol race and seeing Jack pumped up and excited again. It has been really neat to see and gives us a lot of confidence heading into this season.”