Despite not receiving many headline stories, or being mentioned during race telecasts very often, Chris Buescher just keeps putting up great performances. The Prosper, Texas-native has had his most consistent season since moving to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series full-time in 2016.
In Sunday’s Consumers Energy 400 at Michigan International Speedway, Buescher put up another solid effort and looked to be heading to a 12th-place finish. However, his car began to sputter as he approached the finish line, as he was running out of gas. Still, Buescher came home in 14th-place.
With his latest top-15 finish, the 26-year old has moved inside the top-20 of the Cup Series driver point standings. That is impressive, but when you look at the string of races he’s put together recently, it totally makes sense that Buescher is ascending through the standings.
Over his last 12 starts, Buescher has not finished worse than 18th. In that span, Buescher has recorded all four of his 2019 top-10 finishes, and he has tallied seven top-15s during that time.
It’s been a great season, as Buescher has already tied his career-best with four top-10s in a season (and he still has 13 races remaining to best that number), he has a career-best 17.3 average finish (it would also be a all-time JTG Daugherty Racing team-best if he can keep it going the rest of the year) and had a couple of things shaken out a little differently, he may be in a position to point his way into the Playoffs.
Buescher’s two DNF’s came in events where he was running solidly inside the top-10. The season-opening Daytona 500 and Talladega in April. Buescher also had a solid top-five run going at Bristol in the spring before a loose wheel doomed his day.
Still, the JTG Daugherty team have made huge improvements during the 2019 campaign, and if they can keep the momentum going, we may be strongly considering Buescher as a legit threat to make it into the 2020 NASCAR Playoffs.
