Texas native Chris Buescher tells fans what to expect when NASCAR returns at Darlington
Chris Buescher hasn’t been behind the wheel of his race car since he was at Phoenix Raceway on March 8. Within days, sports leagues around the world ground their schedules to a halt amid the growing coronavirus pandemic.
That was 10 weeks ago.
In recent days, some forms of entertainment have returned, and on Sunday NASCAR looks to resume its season. Prosper native Buescher is eager to get back out on the track, and he’ll have the opportunity to do that in The Real Heroes 400 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. The green flag is scheduled to drop shortly after 2:30 p.m. on Fox — without fans in the stands.
“We’re ready to get back going in some way, shape or form here,” Buescher told the Star-Telegram in a telephone interview.
“It’s not our normal and there are going to be a lot of changes. It’s going to be tough to adapt to some of it, but also it’s being well thought out. It’s nice for us to go back to racing, to get back to live sports, to put a little bit of entertainment on TV.”
Buescher, who is in his first season driving the No. 17 Ford Mustang for Roush Fenway Racing, said he had no hesitation in deciding to get behind the wheel again. And he’s excited to get it started at Darlington, his second-favorite track on the schedule despite not having a top-10 run in four career Cup races there. He hopes to change that this weekend as he starts from the 24th position.
Buescher touched on the race and more during a Q&A session:
There will be a lot of folks watching the race who may not be familiar with NASCAR or Darlington. What would you tell them about it? “Our sport is going to have new eyes on us that typically wouldn’t be there, but I want to be clear about something — being at a race in person and attending a live race is completely different than watching on TV. It’s a spectacle and you have to do it at some point in your life. But we can’t do it that way right now, so Darlington is one of the coolest race tracks we go to. It has so much history behind it. It’s probably my second-favorite track we go to right behind Bristol. Being from Texas I’m not supposed to say that it’s ahead of Texas Motor Speedway, but it really is an awesome race track. It’ll be a really cool show. Without practice, without qualifying, the field is going to be stirred up a little bit more than usual with guys going forward and going backward. There will be a lot of action early on.”
How would you handicap this race? Are veterans like Jimmie Johnson in a better position given their experience and history compared to a driver like yourself in his first year with a new team? “We have a new team, so that does take time to get into a rhythm. For us, we were just starting to find something before this all shut down. That puts us in a tougher place than teams like Jimmie Johnson, who has been doing this for so long and has so much to go off of for this race track. But we’re all going to be working hard to dial it in quickly to have a good race.”
Your teammate Ryan Newman had a scary crash at the Daytona 500. (Buescher finished third that day.) What will it be like to see him make his return? “We all know our sport is dangerous. It’s always something in the way back of your mind, but we do forget that because it’s been so long since we’ve had any kind of major injury. That hit us and shocked us all, probably the most scared I’ve been since I’ve been in this sport professionally. But Ryan is ready. He’s as sharp as ever and it’s so awesome for him to step back up and get back at it. He’s a true racer, a tough dude. We’re glad to have him back.”
Finally, how much do you look back on your Texas roots as laying the foundation for your racing career? “All the time. I’ve got thousands of laps on Lil’ Texas Motor Speedway, the 1/5-mile track out there. I remember racing out there, looking across the parking lot at the big track and trying to figure out how to get there when I was 13-, 14-years-old. You don’t know any better. You don’t know how it’s going to happen. You don’t know your chances. You just know that that’s what you want to do.”
