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Chris Buescher Is Feeling Confident With Return To Chase Format 

by racerx55 July 11, 2026 0 comments

By Matthew Thomerson/TheFourthTurn.com

HAMPTON, Ga. – Chris Buescher is heading into EchoPark Speedway and the midsummer stretch of the NASCAR Cup Series season with a bit of a different feeling than in years past.

For Buescher, the most glaring reason is the championship format change, with the return of The Chase. This couldn’t suit the RFK Racing driver any better, as just past the halfway mark in the season, he sits seventh in the standings. 

In years past, the conversation around Buescher would be one of what-ifs and sometimes downright frustration. After having a season where he sat well within the top-10 in points for all of 2024 and 2025, he’d miss the postseason mainly because others won races when he simply didn’t. But that was in past years, not 2026. 

Now, wins don’t lock you in but can only add additional points, and consistency isn’t diminished based on not winning. Buescher and the No.17 Ford team still want to get a win, but he definitely acknowledges the relief of not having to worry about the win and you’re win anymore. 

“We’ve had a couple years where the wins came in the playoffs,” Buescher said. “In ‘23 it came right leading up to it and secured everything for us, but, yeah, if you think about the place we’ve been on a points standpoint, it’s been simply because we hadn’t won races yet the last couple of years and on a straight consistency side of things if you took this format, we would have easily made the Chase. We’re aware of that. It doesn’t change what the system was at the time.  

“We’re aware of where we’re at now, and we’re gonna be a Chase contender. We know that. I’ve told everybody that from the beginning of the year because that’s how we’ve been able to race year in and year out, it’s just we still don’t have a win right now. So from most aspects of it, it’s very much the same, it’s just the result or the perks from the win are not a guarantee, but realistically we feel like we’ve already got that part covered.” 

Echo Park Speedway is one of seven races left before The Chase begins, but two of the last seven are drafting tracks, where massive amounts of points can be lost in the blink of an eye. Buescher finished 15th at the track earlier in the year but finished ninth in this race last year. Buescher is no stranger to superspeedway success and even touting a win at Daytona in 2023. Even though Buescher has a nice buffer, the format change has proven a series of bad races close together can drop drivers many spots in the standings.

“That’s going to come to us with the kind of races we’re able to put together,” Buescher said. “But I want to win races. I don’t want to just be consistently right there around the fifth to eighth place. I want to win races and we’ve got a lot of good tracks coming up for us, but, yes, when you go to drafting racetracks there are those chances that things get wild.

“Take them for what they are. We know it can happen, but we’re in a really good spot and our team has worked really hard to get us here knowing that this was gonna be a stretch where you can have some big gains or big losses.” 

Buescher and the rest of the NASCAR Cup Series stars will take on the mile-and-a-half superspeedway Sunday night. Buescher will roll off the grid in 13th. Pre-race coverage for the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart begins at 6 p.m., with racing shortly after 7 p.m. ET on TNT.  

Photo Credit: Christian Koelle/TheFourthTurn.com