Chris Buescher's confidence has never been higher heading into a new NASCAR Cup season and with good reason.
The 31-year-old native of Prosper, Tex., enjoyed his most successful year in 2023, earning a career-best three wins and advancing to the semifinal round of the playoffs.
While he failed to advance to the Championship 4, he consistently found himself in contention for wins and strong finishes throughout the season – something that had been missing in the first seven years of his Cup career.
“It’s more fun,” Buescher said about coming off his best season. “I mean, for simplest terms it’s just what racing was always supposed to be.
“It’s what you enjoy doing growing up when you went to the track and they saw your hauler roll in there and everybody said, ‘Man, that’s who we’ve got to outrun.’ That’s fun. That was always the joy of it.
“So, we’re certainly as close to that feeling as I’ve been in a couple decades at this point.”
While RFK Racing teammate and co-owner Brad Keselowski failed to win a race in 2023, he did make the playoffs as well and had two runner-up finishes, making RFK a serious contender for wins much of the season.
For Buescher, he continued to excel on short tracks, he also showed strength on speedways and road courses.
Running well on a diversity of tracks is what Buescher feels was he and his No. 17 Ford’s biggest achievement last year.
“I don’t sit here and look at weak points in the schedule for us. That’s kind of what I’m talking about is unloading and feeling like we’ve got a chance wherever we go,” he said.
“There are three or four race tracks that I’m sitting here from a personal side saying, ‘I have a lot of work to do.’ But I think that the team being in such a better place and being a little ahead of me at some of those is really going to help me turn the corner at some of those places, no pun intended.
“I think we go in every week right now and say this is another chance to go win more races and that’s fun to sit here and think about and talk about.”
Buescher’s start to the 2024 season hit a bump when he failed to advance to the 23-car field for last weekend’s preseason Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but he remains upbeat about the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway.
“We’ve had such fast Fords every time we go down to a superspeedway that I don’t see that changing for us,” he said. “The new Dark Horse Mustang, we’re very excited about it for our mile-and-a-halves and some of our larger short tracks.
“From the talks we’ve had and what I’ve gathered, we don’t see any penalty coming for us when we go superspeedway racing, so I think we’re still going to have the speed there. We’re still going to have the ability to push.
“We’ve worked hard to be able to have the handling to go with that, so nothing from my point of view changes going into the 500 that says we won’t be just as competitive and be able to be in the hunt heading into the 500.”
