Chris Buescher embraces slow, steady climb
One year ago, Chris Buescher was grabbing breakfast near his hotel in Ontario, Calif., when the phone rang with what turned out to be life-changing news.
Front Row Motorsports’ No. 34 car needed a driver for the weekend after Brett Moffitt was called into emergency substitute duty for the blood-clot-stricken Brian Vickers. And Buescher, then an Xfinity Series driver with zero career Sprint Cup Series starts, was the choice to fill the seat.
He dashed to nearby Auto Club Speedway, where the next few days became a whirlwind. Buescher performed admirably in a double-duty weekend, finishing fifth in the Xfinity Series race and ending up 20th in his Cup debut – far exceeding all expectations.
“That wasn’t under good circumstances,” Buescher told Paste BN Sports. “That was someone getting sick. You hate for it to come up that way. But you have to try and use it.”
Few could have imagined what resulted from that weekend.
Buescher went on to win the Xfinity championship for Roush Fenway Racing and proved he was ready for Cup through what became six starts in the No. 34 car. But with no room in Roush's Cup cars, the team arranged for him to get a ride at Front Row for his rookie season.
So a year after his debut, Buescher returns to Auto Club Speedway with the same team – just this time as its full-time driver.
“It was our first race, and we were up there racing against guys we’ve watched on TV for years,” Buescher said of the 2015 race. “Everybody was pretty surprised at how it went, including myself to some point. We worked together well with the Front Row guys and made a couple of friendships that ended up transferring right over to this year.”
Buescher, 23, is overshadowed in the rookie of the year race by Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney. But he entered Cup this year with more Xfinity starts than either of them.
Much of his career has been about gaining experience, which has meant he moved up the ladder a little slower than some others. But the laid-back Texan said that pathway was “partly by design.”
For example: He spent two full seasons in ARCA (and won the championship in his second year) before moving on to two full seasons in Xfinity (where he won the championship in his second year again).
“There’s honestly no rush,” he said. “We’ve seen too often people that have come up too quickly and haven’t been able to adapt quickly enough, and you don’t really hear anything about them anymore. So it wasn’t a big hurry. We took it as it came.”
Buescher was involved in a crash at the Daytona 500 and has finished 28th, 26th and 30th in the three weeks since. He’s currently 35th in the points standings, and he acknowledged there would be “growing pains” as he adapted to the Cup cars.
So if he’s able to replicate his successful debut in last year’s Fontana race, it would certainly be a welcome development.
“I’m not going to look like it as, ‘We’ve got to finish better than 20th,’ but I know we can run that,” he said. “But the goal we need to set right now is to get a top 20 or top 15 anyway. We’re going to try for that.”
Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck
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