Firmly on the bubble for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher can take solace in the fact that the upcoming part of the schedule was so good to him last year.
Not that he’s taking anything for granted.
“Three of the next four races we’re heading into, we were able to win last year,” said the 31-year-old Buescher, who is approaching a decade of driving on the top circuit. “That’s a pretty awesome statistic as we look at it, but last year’s results don’t equal this year’s.
“We’ve been very good at a lot of different styles of race tracks. We’ve been very close to locking ourselves in.”
NASCAR is returning from a two-week break for the Paris Olympics, and Sunday night at Virginia’s Richmond Raceway starts a four-event sprint to close the regular season for the Cup Series. A dozen drivers have already won races this year, essentially clinching playoff berths, but Buescher isn’t one of them.
He is 12th in the points standings and third among winless drivers.
In other words, squarely on the borderline for the 16-driver field that makes the playoffs.
Last year, Buescher was also winless entering the Cup Series’ second Richmond stop, but he prevailed in that race, then won again the following week at Michigan International Speedway. He added a third victory in less than a month by closing the regular season with a win at Daytona International Speedway in late August.
“We had been inching towards that kind of success and finally just fired on all eight (cylinders) when we got to Richmond,” Buescher said. “I think that was a big confidence booster for our team as we headed into the next few. We were able to go to Michigan and do the same things, pull off a little bit of strategy there, but also just execute at the highest level, and then Daytona was very much just a team win for us.”
This year’s final stretch before the playoffs will take the Cup Series to Richmond, Michigan, Daytona and South Carolina’s Darlington Raceway. Those venues range in size from short track (three-quarters of a mile at Richmond) to superspeedway (2 1/2-miles at Daytona), so drivers and teams will have to adapt quickly.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin won at Richmond for the fifth time in his Cup Series career earlier this year. Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch is the active leader at the track with six victories, but the two-time Cup Series champion hasn’t won there since 2018 and hasn’t won a Cup Series race anywhere in more than a year.
The seven drivers who have already clinched a spot in the postseason are Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and Tyler Reddick. Alex Bowman, Austin Cindric, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Daniel Suarez have all won this season, and they would all clinch playoff berths unless this weekend’s Richmond victor is a first-time winner in 2024.
On the bubble, the top winless drivers in the standings are Martin Truex Jr., Ty Gibbs, Buescher and Ross Chastain. On the other side of the current cut line are Bubba Wallace, Chase Briscoe, Busch and Todd Gilliland.
Hamlin’s victory in March at Richmond, his home track, came in overtime over JGR teammate Truex. Hamlin is trying to become the first driver to sweep both Cup Series races at Richmond since Truex in 2019.
In the final race before the Olympic break, Larson won the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 21. Larson, the 2021 Cup Series champion, leads the points standings and is the only driver with four wins this season.