Native Texan Chris Buescher has been in the news throughout the NASCAR weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. Buescher drove the No. 60 Safety-Kleen Ford Mustang to a ninth-place finish in Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300, overcoming an embarrassing scrape against the Turn 2 wall on Lap 1.
With 25 laps remaining, the second-year XFINITY Series driver was running in the top five. A tight condition in the closing laps dropped him to ninth–his fourth top 10 of the season. Buescher is second to Ty Dillon in the XFINITY Series driver standings, just two points out of the lead.
Earlier Friday, Front Row Motorsports announced that Buescher would drive the No. 34 CSX “Play It Safe” Ford Fusion in Sprint Cup races next weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway on May 3. The deal will extend Buescher’s run with Front Row to five races. He has been filling the seat vacated by team regular David Ragan, who continues to sub for the injured Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Toyota.
A native of Prosper, Buescher qualified the No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford 40th for Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 at TMS–a scenario he always had envisioned.
“I didn’t really think about actually making it happen,” Buescher said. “I grew up about 45 minutes east of here and made a lot of trips out here. I sat in the grandstands for the first race here in the monsoon that happened (in 1997), and have been coming back a lot since. I’ve been telling everybody that I’ve got hundreds if not thousands of laps on the quarter-mile on the frontstretch and the fifth-mile of the dirt track out back. We’ve run the road course through the infield in different cars, just not a whole lot of laps around the big track, so it’s pretty awesome to be able to do it.
“I didn’t really see it coming back in ’97, but it’s pretty neat to be out here and doing this. It’s a dream come true, really, and I’m trying to take advantage of it right now. I know the Cup side is temporary, but it’s still cool to say that I’ve made it up and ran a Cup race at my home track.”
