When the NASCAR Cup Series visited the West Coast for a trio of early-season races last year, the best result RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher had to show for it was a single top-10 finish.
He finished 35th at California’s Auto Club Speedway, 18th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and 10th at Arizona’s Phoenix Raceway — a tough start to his third Cup Series campaign with RFK.
“Going out west last year was especially difficult with the new car and very limited practice. We were fighting a lot of tire issues,” Buescher recalled. “Even though we ran better than where we finished, at the end of the day, it didn’t set us off on a good start for the year.”
Buescher feels that the team has vastly improved its résumé this time around.
Last Sunday at Auto Club Speedway, Buescher finished 13th in the No. 17 Ford Mustang. Meanwhile, teammate Brad Keselowski cracked the top 10 to finish seventh. Upon exit from the two-mile track in Fontana, Calif., the team has primarily focused on setup development.
While Buescher’s confident they’ve addressed certain tire failures that held them back in the past, fine-tuning their long run speed is still a concern.
As the RFK hauler heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the second of three western races, the No. 17 driver plans to use the 1.5-mile oval as a gauge for the car’s performance on intermediate tracks.
“We’ll get a read on where we’re at here and then from there, we’ve got to try to dial it in once we get back to the East Coast,” Buescher said. “We’re kind of in a box as we go out west. We just don’t have the ability to tear everything apart and start over that far away from home.”
For the eight-year Cup Series veteran, it’s about surviving the next two races as much as it’s about building momentum for the remaining season.
With the RFK shop located a few thousand miles away from Las Vegas in Concord, N.C., the team’s growing notebook won’t be put to much use until the series travels east to Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway in mid-March and RFK moves back to its home base.
Even with the limited resources, Buescher is optimistic he can capitalize on the strength of his season so far, as long as he stays on his toes Sunday in Las Vegas.
“Some of the wildest restarts I felt like we saw last year came from Las Vegas,” Buescher said. “We’ll be ready for four and five-wide. It’s bound to get a little bit wild out there, but we’ll do what we can to be ready and try and have another surge forward.”
The Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube will take the green at 3:30 p.m. (ET) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 5.