Chris Buescher dominates race at Richmond, shakes up NASCAR playoff picture
Make that 12 winners this year.
Chris Buescher, the driver of the 17 car for the consistently plucky RFK Racing team, dominated the NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway on Sunday. The win delivered his third career Cup win and his first at Richmond — and it also intensified an already scalding hot playoff run.
After a big celebratory burnout, the Prosper, Texas, native smiled and winked to the NBC Sports camera post-race.
“Guess you don’t have to ask me about points anymore,” he said.
Guess not.
In the NASCAR Cup Series, if you win a regular-season race, you’re in the playoffs. With Buescher’s triumph Sunday, that means 12 slots of the 16-car playoff field are taken.
As it stands now, here are the drivers who have a realistic chance on getting into the playoffs on points. They’re fighting for the final four spots with four races left in the regular season.
- Kevin Harvick. The veteran in his final year of Cup racing finished P10 on Sunday and is 182 points above the cut-line.
- Brad Keselowski. He finished P6 and is 151 points above the cut-line.
- Bubba Wallace. The driver for 23XI Racing’s 23 car led a handful of laps on Sunday but saw a mistake on pit lane early that took him out of contention. He finished P12 and is now 54 points above the cut-line.
- Michael McDowell. He finished P22 and is 18 points above the cut-line.
- Ty Gibbs. The rookie is having a stellar year, but a win has alluded him. He’s 18 points below the cut-line after Sunday’s P15 finish.
- AJ Allmendinger. Allmendinger started at the back after not qualifying on Saturday — he was busy competing in the Xfinity race at Road America — and finished P27. He now sits 22 points below the cut-line.
- Daniel Suarez. The driver of the 99 car had a brutal day — starting in 33rd and finishing in 33rd — and was the car that spun out and prompted the race’s only caution-for-cause. He now sits 34 points below the cut-line.
- Chase Elliott. The sport’s most popular driver looked to have a chance at a win Sunday after qualifying in the second row, but he finished 13th, keeping him a sizable 40 points below the cut-line. (Fans have long written off Elliott’s playoffs-via-points chances — but that doesn’t mean he’s not capable of winning.)
As far as the race itself? There wasn’t much to write home about. There were only three cautions for 21 laps. Brad Keselowski, Buescher’s boss and teammate, ran a race-best 102 laps from the lead but couldn’t pass Buescher once the 17 made his pass on pit road. (Buescher led 88 laps.)
For a bulk of Stage 3, Buescher ran six seconds ahead of the rest of the field.
The race’s lone caution-for-cause came with 10 laps to go, when Suarez spun out. That prompted a restart with four laps to go. Buescher elected to take the inside lane and lined up beside Virginia native and short-track goliath Denny Hamlin.
It looked like for a moment, with two laps to go, that Hamlin had the car to overpower and pass Buescher — but his brakes locked up on a turn, and the race was Buescher’s the rest of the way.
“I was just so close to him there that I wanted to squirt a little more gas on the outside, but just too much brakes,” Hamlin said. “But man, I’m happy for Chris and RFK and those guys. I know they’ve worked really hard to get to this point, and I can appreciate the struggle that it is to get to this point. So congratulations to them.”
Here’s Buescher’s perspective on the late-race caution.
“I was taking care of it and then shifting and about the time (crew chief) Scott (Graves) came on the radio and said, ‘Let’s work it just like that. Keep it smooth.’ I don’t think he even got off the button before the caution (came out),” Buescher said, smiling. “So I knew it was gonna take some work to get back going, but our Fastenal Mustang was so good firing off today, so good in practice. I didn’t get the job done in qualifying (he started the race P26). I had to pass a bunch of cars today and have some great strategy and some great pit stops.
“Everybody at RFK Racing who has worked so hard to get us to this point. This is awesome. I knew that last restart was gonna be tough, but I knew we had the speed in this thing.”
