Ryan Blaney scored his first win of the season on Sunday in Nashville. RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher hopes to do the same this weekend in Michigan, scoring another win for the blue oval brigade in Motor City’s backyard.
Being a wheelman for RFK racing at Michigan, comes with some added pressure with team owners Brad Keselowski and Jack Roush being from Michigan.
“There’s a little added pressure behind everything heading into everybody’s home track. Fortunately, we’ve got a third car and it’s not Preece’s home track, so at least there are two of us this year, but it’s a big one as we head up there. We have a lot going on. We’ll get to see a lot of the Ford family and get to see a lot of Jack and the Roush automotive family that will come out to the racetrack and be a part of the weekend. It’s a big deal. It really is, so I’m excited to get back up there. We got to do the tire test there a couple months ago, so I felt like that went really strong for us and I’m ready to get on track. It’s gonna be really fast to fire off with the weather looking like it’s gonna be in the seventies,” said Buescher.
Buescher will have an added advantage this weekend at Michigan as he and the No. 17 team took part in a pre-race test there earlier this season.
“It was a long test day for everybody, but the team did a good job. We got everything rolling in the right direction and you always learn a couple things for yourself and then as we got into sets of tires and different options, we made short and long runs and ultimately I think we didn’t have to tune on our race car a whole lot, which makes me really confident going back. We threw a lot of different tire options at it, so I think what we ended up with and what I think we’re going back with – and maybe I’m gonna be incorrect on this – but should be the same left side that we run at all these other mile-and-a-halves at this point.”
“We were very good last year, so all things considered, even with our damage there at the end, we had a good race car. I think that turn three ultimately is the bigger challenge at that speedway. It’s just flatter. In turn one you have so much banking that it’s a lot easier to keep power down. Obviously, it’s a track position sensitive race and it’s just not widened out very much. I kind of poke fun at it and laugh about this a little bit, but however that surface has not aged, it doesn’t seem like one bit over the course of what has it been – over a decade since it was re-done.”
Tune into coverage of the FireKeepers Casino 400 beginning at 1pm on Sunday on Owensboro’s Home for NASCAR, WVJS presented by Floor Concepts.
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