Chris Buescher proves his mettle in epic NASCAR road race duel with Shane Van Gisbergen

To be the best, you have to be the best, they say and Chris Buescher won his first career NASCAR Cup Series road course race in an absolutely dramatic duel with Shane Van Gisbergen on Sunday at Watkins Glen International.

In this style of car, on this style of track, SVG is considered a generational talent but that meant little to Buescher on the final lap.

Buescher controlled the lead on the final restart but Van Gisbergen used the bumper unsettle the RFK Racing No 17 and take the spot. Without looking at the live, as they run Las Vegas odds, the expected chances that Buescher could get back to him and make it a race were slim.

It’s Shane Van Gisbergen on a road course.

But SVG also knew that, especially by his very conservative standards, he took liberties in getting into the back of Buescher and that it would be reciprocated if the margin ever closed up enough to make it happen.

Buescher stayed with Van Gisbergen, through taking the white flag, and the pressure was on.

“I gave him a little bump to get the spot, and I knew it was going to come back,” Buescher said. “So, I was just pushing the entries and trying to get away and just made an error. I’m pissed because these races are hard to win.”

The error was overdriving the bus stop chicane, unsettling the car, and allowing Buescher to get to his inside. At that point, the favor was repaid and Buescher leaned into Van Gisbergen, enough to break the momentum and pull out ahead.

“I didn’t think that it was dirty,” Buescher said. “It was very aggressive racing, right, when it came down to it and we were able to single-file out and seen that he pulled away for half a lap there, and I kind of thought my chance was slim.

“Then when the white flag came out, we were able to really pull up on him. Yeah, it was — I was going to keep the pressure on him. If the opportunity arose, I was definitely going to — we were going to push and shove a little bit. I’m not out here to flat-out wreck somebody. He didn’t do anything to me to deserve something like that, but we were going to race hard for it and have a battle all the way to the finish.

“I guess ultimately if he is running that hard, then he knows where his mindset was at and knows that if the roles were reversed, he probably wouldn’t like being shoved up the hill like that. If he is thinking I was going to return the favor, I think if the roles were reversed, that kind of means that he would be in the same mindset as well.”

To wit, Van Gisbergen took no exceptions to it.

“I knew Chris was really going to send it and push me if he could get there,” said the three-time Australian Supercars champion. “As I turned and got a bit loose and clipped the inside wall and driver error. I’m gutted.”

Buescher was actually surprised that’s where the mistake was made.

“The bus stop was not a great passing zone and not a good place for … it was actually where they were better than us pretty consistently there in those last 20, 30 laps,” Buescher said. “I really had been really good through the carousel, so I wanted to get through the bus stop clean.

“Like I said, I drove in hard, but I wasn’t going to go crazy. He was still digging when I lifted, and he was two car lengths ahead. Just kind of clicked at that moment that that was probably not going to stick through there, and it was going to open up an opportunity for us.”

Van Gisbergen, as frustrated as he was at himself in that moment, actually came to Victory Lane. Was there any expectation that SVG was going to come at him sideways?

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I didn’t feel like anything was dirty there at the end. We talked about it. There was a little push and shoving on both sides. Ultimately he had a big error there into the bus stop, and we just took advantage of it and really had to be aggressive to get to the hole.

“But, yeah, I didn’t feel like there was anything that was dirty about it. I didn’t expect him coming over to be mad about anything.”

With that said, Buescher, who has a boiler of a frame, a whole unit as they say, added that Van Gisbergen is the one guy he wouldn’t want to throw down with.

“On that note, I think that’s the one guy out here that’s bigger than me,” Buescher said. “So if there’s that moment where I feel like he is mad coming over, I better take note, right? Just on the flip side, I’m sure some others don’t like seeing me come over.

“So, yeah, I appreciated him coming over and saying ‘Good race,’ because I feel like it was a really good race. We got after each other hard, but ultimately there was nothing crazy in those last couple of laps. Just good, hard racing.”

Buescher was on the victory podium ‘so I had the high ground,’ he joked.

“I had that going for me,” he said, with a laugh.

It was a rewarding win for Buescher on a lot of levels because for one, it’s against one of the best at currently turning left and right in a car that it heavily inspired by the Australian Supercar he used to race Down Under .

“SVG has been such a phenomenal road course racer, or is a phenomenal road course racer, and knew when he got that spot on that last restart that it was going very tricky to get back by him and just wanted to make sure that we stayed in the hunt, that we drove the thing hard and kept pressure on him and made him at least realize we were still there, that it wasn’t going to be a cruise away,” Buescher said.

“I think ultimately that was the ticket, right, was just to make sure that you get other drivers in their mirror and looking up instead of looking forward. It was a lot of fun. Just a good old-fashioned hard battle to the end.”

But this was also satisfying because Buescher has been in the Roush Racing family his entire career. He was recruited by former Cup driver, and current Ford Performance consultant David Ragan, and has experienced the highs and lows of the rebuilding process that coincided with both the NextGen car and Brad Keselowski coming over as a team co-owner and driver.

Longtime team president Steve Newmark wasn’t even aware that this was the first year that the team had won with two cars since 2013.

“Sports are cyclical, and we hit a rough patch and weren’t achieving what we had aspired to and what our goals were each year,” Newmark said. “What we’ve seen, and a lot of credit goes to Brad and how he’s come in with his leadership and kind of helped us continue to evolve as a race team, but our goal is for both cars every week to be a threat to win the race.

“There’s no doubt if you rewind a few years, we weren’t there, but we do feel that we’ve gotten there in the last year, year and a half. Obviously finished seventh and eighth in points last year. The 17 had three wins. Brad had some close opportunities, but we didn’t get both of them in victory lane last year.

“You fast forward to this year, and I really think that the statistic that probably tells the story the best for us is that we had the fourth and fifth highest average finishes with the 6 and the 17 this year. So you had two of the top five.”

Buescher missed the playoffs, not because of a lack of consistency, but the wins that got away from him at tracks like Kansas and Darlington earlier in the season.

But Buescher, through both the Roush Fenway and RFK eras, was always the foundation of the team’s future and he proved that on a road course against one of the modern legends of the discipline.

“There was a handful of really hard years,” Buescher said. “Very well documented hard years. It’s definitely tricky. You do your best to keep your head up and through all that we’ve come out in a much better place now.

“Whether that’s everybody back at the Roush shop from that side, whether it’s the Fenway group and their big investment into commitment, their big commitment to making us better, or if that’s Brad Keselowski’s fingerprints all over everything that we’re doing now, there’s a ton of factors that come into play, but ultimately the results are speaking for themselves. We are in probably the best place that I have seen in 15, 16 years.”

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