Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Ultimately, that will be the tale of Chris Buescher’s 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. After several close calls, including finishing second in the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history, the driver of the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse saw his bid for the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs officially come to an end as Chase Briscoe crossed the finish line first in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
With the win, Briscoe became the 14th different driver to secure a berth in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs by way of a victory. And in doing so, he essentially pulled the Playoff cutline out from under Buescher’s feet.
As Briscoe lit up his rear tires on the frontstretch, Buescher climbed from his car after a solid sixth-place finish. It was a good run, but not quite good enough as Buescher failed to advance to the Playoffs by a thin margin of six points to Martin Truex Jr., who had locked up his Playoff Berth at the end of Stage 2 of Sunday’s race despite crashing out on the third lap.
“To miss it by that much is a bummer,” Buescher admitted. “Last time we were here if that day would have been different, this would have been a different story tonight, but that’s not the case. All kinds of moments like that looking back on the year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be this year, and we’re on the outside looking in. Pretty bummed by the end of the night, but another great finish for us. Everybody worked so hard on this BuildSubmarines.com Mustang. I’m proud of them for that. Didn’t get the finish, didn’t get a win earlier in the year.”
While he didn’t get a win through the opening 26 races of the season, Buescher was about as close as you humanly could get to a win without pulling into victory lane in back-to-back weekends in May.
At Kansas, Buescher was initially scored as the race winner as his No. 17 went to the top of the scoring pylon at the end of the final lap of the race. But upon inspection of the photo finish camera, Buescher had lost out to Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson by literally an inch, maybe less. Officially, it was the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history at 0.001 seconds. For Buescher, it was a gutting night.
The next weekend at Darlington, Buescher was back with a vengeance. While Tyler Reddick had dominated on the day, Buescher took the lead with 21 laps to go and looked to be heading to a certain victory. That is until he most certainly wasn’t thanks to contact from Reddick, who made contact that cut Buescher’s tire down with nine laps remaining.
Buescher would finish 30th that day, and after climbing from his car, he would confront and shove Reddick.
Despite the backbreaking finishes two weeks in a row, Buescher and his No. 17 team kept on digging and found solid consistency throughout the year. For a while, it looked like their bountiful harvest of points would be plenty to get them into the Playoffs. But as more and more winners began to stack up on the scoring sheet, things got a bit more nerve-racking.
Ultimately, due to a rash of surprise winners down the stretch, including back-to-back wins by Harrison Burton and Briscoe, six drivers below Buescher in the championship standings will now battle it out over the next 10 weeks for the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
“Yeah, it’s just the format we’re living in, right? It’s tough because as close as we’ve been and as well as we’ve run, and even with a lot of the mistakes and bad luck along the way, we’ve very consistently outrun these drivers that are in the Playoffs, and we’re not going to get to race with them,” Buescher anguished.
While it’s a tough pill to swallow, Buescher vows that he and his team will go back to the drawing board, and detect where their season was derailed, and they’ll come back stronger.
“It’s definitely frustrating looking at it. I guess only two cars made it on points, right? So, ultimately it means we didn’t win a race and — or did enough to get wrecked at this one last time by. Those are different things, you can always and everybody will go back and talk about days they wanted to go different. None of that matters, but we’re going to think about it for sure,” Buescher said.
While Buescher was disappointed, and deservingly so, he knows at the end of the day, he didn’t do the one thing you need to do to ensure your advancement to the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, and that’s win.
“It’s the system we’ve got, right? Should’ve won,” Buescher stated. “That was our plan from off the stretch last year, we knew we were going to be contenders and needed a win earlier. A couple of runner-ups and some really good finishes right away, but never really sealed the deal.”
It’s a sad and bitter end to what was a once-promising regular season for Buescher and his No. 17 team. Now, they’ll look to play the Playoff spoiler over the final 10 races as they attempt to build momentum for next year, where they’ll look to carve out a berth in the Playoffs once again.
