Judging by the past two years, the summer months have been productive for Roush Fenway Keselowski’s Chris Buescher. Last year he earned his only win of the season in September at Watkins Glen. Two years ago, the driver of the No. 17 RKF Ford scored all three of his victories in the summer – back-to-back at Richmond (July 30) and Michigan (Aug. 7), then won again at the end of August at Daytona International Speedway’s regular season finale.
Heading into this week’s Firekeepers Casino 400 at Michigan, Buescher is the only one among the three RFK drivers ranked above the Playoff cutoff line – 15th in the championship by Playoff standings; six points up on Kyle Busch in that last Playoff position and only eight points up on his RFK teammate Ryan Preece in 17th.
Buescher is of course hopeful that he can reclaim some of that Michigan magic on the two-miler. He led a race high 52 of 200 laps and beat Martin Truex Jr. by a slight 152-second for his win two years ago. He has only three top 10s in 14 Michigan starts – but two in the last two races (win and sixth last year). It’s not enough to make him over-confident but does give him some optimism heading into the all-important summer months of competition. With points so close, a victory may be the best option to earn a Playoff bid.
“You can’t depend on points to get you in the playoffs when it’s as tight as it is every week,’’ Buescher said. “I think that’s been our mindset, which means that ultimately wherever we bounce around that [Playoff cutoff] line we’ll be aware of it, but it’s a matter of figuring out how to go win races and we haven’t done that yet.
“We’ve not been quite good enough and we’re working on trying to clean up some of the detail work and study a little harder and be better from my end behind the wheel and make it to where we basically lock ourselves in on that side of it and don’t have to have any of that thought in the back of our heads.
“But I certainly don’t want it to be what we’re sitting here thinking of how can we get two points here, three points there and try and just feel like we can skate our way in. It doesn’t work. Ultimately, you can’t count on that when it comes down to the end.”
