Rightly so, Sunday‘s race winner Denny Hamlin celebrated his dramatic victory in Sunday‘s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway with a huge burnout and even a wink-wink tease to those in the massive crowd who booed the Toyota driver‘s clutch win in “The Wolverine State.”
But as significant as Hamlin‘s third win of the season was — the 57th of his NASCAR Hall of Fame-bound career — the driver that finished runner-up to him had some legitimate reason to feel good, too. In fact, Chris Buescher‘s entire Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing team took Sunday‘s checkered flag with some legitimately good vibes.
Buescher‘s runner-up finish in the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford was his best showing of the season and, for the first time this year, all three of the RFK Ford Mustangs finished in the top 10 in a race.
MORE: Full Michigan race results | Best at-track photos
It was exactly the kind of summer-swing boost the team needed as it heads toward the final 11 regular-season races to set the 16-driver NASCAR Playoffs grid.
“That was such a fast Kroger/Heinz Ford Mustang, I really appreciate everybody on this team working so hard to put us in this situation and to have a chance to win,” said Buescher, the 2023 Michigan race winner.
“I‘m disappointed I didn‘t get it done. It‘s on me. I had a couple different decisions I would love to go back and make and ultimately should have had us ahead of the 11. We were faster on the day, and I didn‘t do a good enough job. We‘ll certainly take the good with it. We certainly need a little bit of good luck or fortune on our side.
“It hurts right now, but there‘s a ton of positive out of today,” he continued. “Our car was so fast here from the time we unloaded off the truck yesterday. I‘m certainly proud of that and excited for what we have to come, but there‘s a little bit of a sting right now to be that close and miss out.”
Although Buescher took a self-critical assessment of his day in the immediate moments after climbing out of his car on pit road Sunday, looking at the big picture, Michigan represented a significant step forward for the team.
His teammate Ryan Preece finished ninth, his third top-10 run in the last four races and sixth of the season. Owner-driver Brad Keselowski finished just behind in 10th place for his second top 10 of the year — both coming in just the last three weeks, however.
“We had a really good car,” Keselowski said. “I felt like we had a top two or three car and just didn‘t get to see it through. I‘m really disappointed.
“We kind of crushed ourselves on pit road with the speeding penalty and then having to go around the 45 and the 71. Every time we pitted, we would lose a lot of spots. It wasn‘t the pit crew‘s fault, we just needed a better pit stall. I‘m not really sure on the speeding penalty. I felt I was way slow, so getting called fast didn‘t really add up, but we had the speed to do a lot more than we did today, and I‘m disappointed to not get that. Still, we‘re reasonably happy with a top 10.”
The difference on Sunday is that the drivers were disappointed because they were justifiably competitive. And that‘s a step forward for a team that carries perpetual and legitimate high expectations.
Buescher is currently 14th in the standings, 20 points to the good on the 16-driver grid. Preece is tied for 16th with Kyle Busch, but holds that final position based on a higher race finish this season. Keselowski, who has had a rough start to the year, is ranked 32nd and will likely need a victory in these next 11 races to ensure his chance for another title run.
| Rank | Driver | Cutoff |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | Bubba Wallace | +61 |
| 13 | Chase Briscoe | +41 |
| 14 | Chris Buescher | +20 |
| 15 | Alex Bowman | +13 |
| 16 | Ryan Preece | +0 |
| ELIMINATION LINE | ||
| 17 | Kyle Busch | -0 |
| 18 | Carson Hocevar | -18 |
| 19 | AJ Allmendinger | -18 |
| 20 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | -20 |
The series now moves to Mexico City for the inaugural race, the Viva Mexico 250 (3 p.m. ET on Prime Video, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the world-renowned Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez road course. And there is reason for RFK to be optimistic.
Not only is this a first-time event for the entire field — an equalizer in itself — but Buescher, Preece and Keselowski are proficient road-course racers. Buescher is the defending Watkins Glen International race winner and has six top-five finishes on road or street courses. Preece has a pair of top 10s on road courses, and Keselowski has seven top 10s over the course of his championship career.
“We‘re in this stretch of races where we‘ve won at a few of these things,” Buescher said. “We‘ve run really strong at a lot of others. We‘re gonna get in the summer where it‘s gonna get hot and we‘re gonna start catching a few drivers off guard here or there.
“Ultimately, there‘s a lot of good race tracks coming up for some good racing for us, selfishly at RFK and probably some good ones for some other teams as well. We‘ll see where it all plays out, but I guess, for us, I don‘t think we have any race tracks on the schedule that we don‘t feel good about. One, it‘s fun to have that mindset and not have to head into a race weekend just hoping to get through it, and that comes from fast race cars.”
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