Christopher Bell and Christopher Buescher share at least one thing beyond driving in the NASCAR Cup Series.
“Longest first name in the garage, right?” Buescher quipped after Friday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice.
Currently, however, the drivers have one other thing in common. After winning their opening-round In-Season Challenge matchups last Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, Buescher and Bell will face each other in Round 2, with the victor meeting the winner of Sunday’s Denny Hamlin vs. Erik Jones contest July 12 at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta.
“We’ve got a battle going,” Buescher said. “They (Bell’s team) have been really good on mile-and-a-halfs this year, as have we, but we’ve been somewhere about fifth to eighth—that’s kind of been our stuck point.
“I felt really good about practice today. It’s really a bit of a different animal, given that we’ve been gone from this place so long… But (the battle against Bell) is not something that you go in and use as a primary focus. It’s a secondary part of the race, and we’ll do everything we can to figure how to win.”
Buescher was 10th fastest in Friday’s practice, and Bell was 17th. Despite breaking his wrist in a devastating crash June 7 at Michigan, Bell fashioned an impressive fifth-place finish last Sunday at Sonoma, where Buescher ran ninth.
For the first time since the accident, Bell will race without a cast this weekend.
