Chris Buescher is in his ninth full-time NASCAR Cup Series season. He’s won five times, or done something only 2.8% of NASCAR drivers have ever done in winning five races or more in a career. Before the April 14 race at Texas Motor Speedway, I visited with the native Texan and we talked about a variety of topics, including his Lone Star roots, why he enrolled in Dale Carnegie classes at age 15, and the one thing he likes way more in his home state compared to his current residence in North Carolina, and it has to do with speed.
Beating & Banging: Obviously short tracks, that’s the big top topic of conversation right now. It’s kind of a red alert. It feels like NASCAR is really saying we got to do something. So do you have a solution? Everybody seems to offer a solution. What is your opinion on what could make it better?
Chris Buescher: Yeah, we all got ideas, right? And, to be fair, I certainly understand there’s probably a lot more in the workings versus what may be realistic. That being said, I’m always a fan of horsepower. And I think that I miss the days when I think the most horsepower I ever had in a race car was an ARCA car. It was right around 900. Cup cars were pushing 1,000.
Thought there was a lot of tire management back then. Second thing is going to be just tires, right? How do we get something that does what we’re trying to do? Bristol was probably a day when we had some issues. We can get to this point for sure. And, so how do we make that, kind of find a little bit of a happy medium, come back 25 percent to make it where we can make a little bit farther than a run or maybe not even that, but at least feel like you’re able to run 90 or 100% for a couple of laps and then take it easy to try and save your stuff, not to the point where you feel like you’re having to run 70% for the whole run.
B&B: I don’t know if you heard Denny (Hamlin) say something along the lines of Dale Jr. and let him go out and test the tires. So what if they said: ‘Alright guys, we’re going to have former drivers test on Mondays. Current drivers can test on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and we’re going to do this for however long it takes us to figure this out.’ Would you, and do you think other drivers would volunteer for something like this?
Buescher: Oh yeah, absolutely. If that came up, absolutely they would do it. Try and get the ability to do it and try stuff. I think taking former drivers is probably a good start. One, not every team in this garage area can go test, and that’s where the testing policy came out of was trying to make it more fair for the entire garage. We had a time where teams were running racetracks weekly. They went out spending astronomical amounts of money to do it. So we certainly don’t want that, but if you had a program where you had people that weren’t gaining an advantage out of it that can go do legitimate tire tests.
So yeah, I’d say there’s probably a lot of opportunity there to actually make that work. I could see that one work.
B&B: Let’s go to your Texas roots. We talked at COTA and you mentioned Liberty Hill. Set up the whole Prosper and Liberty Hill and your age ranges in there?
Buescher: So I grew up in Prosper. We lived in Prosper when we were coming out to this racetrack, running the fifth mile out back behind Big Hoss, before Big Hoss was a thing, which was before the dirt track back there was a thing – the little dirt track. Even ran a Legends car race on the big dirt track, which was a little sketchy, and then a bunch of laps in the infield on the road course during the winter series that I believe were mixed in with the quarter-mile on the front stretch as well.
I know we ran a lot there. I just don’t remember when. So I have laps on all the surfaces around here. I think we won on the three asphalt surfaces, other than the big track. And, I did not pull off a win on the big dirt track that day. That was not my cup of tea. That being said, that was all out of the Prosper days.
My family moved down to South Texas when I was already in North Carolina. So I never actually lived down around the Austin area. Just would go to visit when we’d go out for Christmas. My wife and I and our dogs at the time before we had kids, we’d get in the motor home and we’d road trip to Texas for Christmas about every year for probably 10 years or so. That’s where really the whole Liberty Hill experience came from for me.
My parents have a lot of really good friends out there. And then my sister stayed up in North Texas after my parents and middle sister ended up moving to North Carolina as of a couple years ago.
B&B: How old were you when you left Texas?
Buescher: 15.
B&B: So you left your family at 15. That’s a big step for a 15-year-old kid to leave his family. So that’s like, I’m committed to professional racing. Is that kind of the thought?
Buescher: Yeah, that was it. Not the most fun way to go about it for sure. But I think I was 13 and we were sitting in the living room in Prosper and kind of talking about this hobby that we were doing, going to the racetrack and said, alright, if we want this to be serious, we’re gonna have to put in a little bit more work and more effort, going to have to make some decisions.
And so that time it was, alright, when summer break gets here, we’re gonna take off to Charlotte and we’re gonna go race for three months. And, it’s not gonna be your summer vacation that all the kids have where you get in trouble and just run around and goof off. We took off to Charlotte and worked on race cars. Raced I think 60-something races. On track 60 times over the course of three months.
We stayed busy and got to know a lot of people and and met some good friends. The Ragan family being a couple of those friends. Through that I had a lot of good advice from him. And Ken Ragan, who was running the Legends car program out of Harrisburg, North Carolina at the time, basically got to the end of our third year out there and said, ‘Look, if you really want to chase this, you need to be out here.’
He told my dad that and the family wasn’t in a position to move. So Ken Ragan goes, ‘David’s moved out. I got a spare bedroom here at the house, so let’s talk about it. Maybe you come out here and you go work in David’s shop.’ I had started homeschooling through high school just because of travel commitments. To continue that on, moved out there. That took some convincing with mom, for sure, but moved out there right before I turned 16.
And basically got into a rhythm of homeschooling for the first half of the day, going to David’s personal race shop in the afternoon to go work and help them out. And then we go somewhere during lunch time to pit practice or whatever else to volunteer, go clean wheels and try and drive pit practice cars from time to time and just pretty much took off from there. So, I initially got to North Carolina without the ability to drive myself where I needed to go. My Texas permit was not valid out there and so I had to get rides for a long time.
I had to attend or was enrolled into Dale Carnegie’s speaking courses down in Charlotte at 15. That was nerve wracking. One, I had to get a ride down there every time. And, two, it’s like all around 30 to 40-year-old marketing executives, CEOs, and man, I am out of place. I’m just a kid trying to figure out how to do a little public speaking.
It was a lot. Hit you all at once. Looking back on it now, it seems like a lot of people, just all the little things that took on to try and make this work and get to this point.
B&B: So when I heard you say the whole Dale Carnegie thing on NASCAR Race Hub, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, 15 years old.’ And then you describe what you just described here. So that’s like, it’s not even real, right? I’m sure all these other guys are looking at you going this kid, right? I know it’s leadership and like you said, public speaking. Clearly you’ve attained a position in the Cup Series. Did that help you?
Buescher: Oh absolutely. 100%. Probably should have taken another one somewhere as a refresher. That was probably one of the biggest things I did in my racing career that was not from behind the wheel. You obviously work a lot, you network a lot, you make — people that just were friends before they were anything else, were supporters or helping to push you into different areas or financial support. You just make friends and have friends all over the country now from those days. But I think for me the Dale Carnegie speaking courses was the best thing I did. I look back at my Legends car days, my win interviews, they sit there and put a mic in front of you. The summer shootout at Charlotte used to be televised. You’d get out there with a microphone in your face. They’d ask how the day was. Good. That was me. I was not made for public speaking and needed a fair amount of pushing to get better at that.
B&B: That’s just fascinating. There’s a statistic on you that stuck out to me. There are a total of 85 drivers with five or more Cup wins, or 2.8% of all drivers. That is really elite company. So this Texas kid, 15 years old, moves to Carolina. Your career, has it lived up to what you expected going in as that 15-year-old who moved to Carolina?
Buescher: Maybe a little slower than I had hoped, but certainly enjoying it now more than ever. You know, we’re competitive week in, week out. Continuing to learn and evolve. RFK is in a much better place than it’s been since I first signed up over there 15 years ago. So I mean, it’s all kind of coming together now. It just seemed like it would’ve happened 10 years ago. But, at the time, the 15-year-old kid, I was probably a little bit greedy and trying to do everything all at once. I realized there’s a lot to it and it’s not an easy world to come across success. So it’s certainly in a nice spot, and it’s pretty cool to look at those numbers and realize how small of a company that we are in. We’re ready to make those numbers smaller yet. Gotta figure out how to keep going, how to take us up into that next group that’s 10 wins and then beyond that. We’re on our way. We got some work to do yet.
B&B: What’s the biggest difference since Brad became co-owner?
Buescher: The first thing, the most obvious thing I keep coming to is the first thing that happened. It’s the most noticeable thing every time you walk in a shop — it’s just cleanliness, organization, kind of some workflow stuff. What it probably comes down to more than anything, it’s just details, detail work.
But what that surfaced as initially was everything in the shop getting cleaned up, organized. You could eat lunch off the floor now, right? Functionally, it always worked before, but it looks a lot different now. It’s a lot cleaner, it’s a lot more organized. It allows us to focus on detail work. I think it holds everyone accountable to just a higher standard of work. And it seems like that was his first big push. Yeah, it was something that for the initial time, we weren’t where we wanted to be winning races. And everybody said, well, painting the walls and epoxying the floor, what is this doing to help us?
And you look back now, and you can go through the shop, and it looks just the same now as it did three years ago when it first got done. It’s like, alright, well, you start to understand that this was just the foundation for a lot of bigger principles to come. That’s the one I always tell people about because it’s right there in your face every time you come through.
People have been around from the past, they come back now, it’s a big change.
B&B: What is the most bizarre thing you’ve seen on the racetrack?
Buescher: Most bizarre? I’ve seen a beaver run across the racetrack one time when we were testing. That was one where you knew if you hit it, it was going to actually, obviously expire the animal but probably expire the race car as fast as it was going. That was one of those 205 MPH test. Something like that would have destroyed everything. Didn’t hit him. It was Ford proving grounds testing back in the day. Outside of that, I’d probably come back to Xfinity years. This would have been 2014 I believe when Travis Pastrana was driving the 60 car. At the time, Travis Pastrana was driving the 60 car at Roush on the Xfinity side. I remember being behind him several times, one of them was here in Texas, was one of the big moments and we come off the corner on a restart or something and he would get sideways to the point where we’re reading Goodyear over the left front fender. He was so sideways the whole field is pure panicking out of the gas lifting, trying to figure out where we’re all gonna wreck at.
And sometimes I swear he did it by design. So all of a sudden you straighten that thing back out and smoke would start pouring off the right rear as he’s drifting a stock car around the corner and he’d get back on and take off and then he left all of us around him, that were right behind him, right? We’d sit there and be like, we got to go again, like he saved that, we were not wrecking. That was some of the most bizarre moments, just some of the most wild recoveries I’ve ever seen. We’re racing with Pastrana that year, I remember probably two or three points, but one of the biggest ones here in Texas off of Turn 2.
B&B: Texas pride. Obviously, you haven’t lived here since you’re 15, but you talked about it. I saw your shoes. Talk to me about being a lifelong Texan. What does it mean to you, Texas pride?
Buescher: Yeah. I realize now I’m removed from here as long as I grew up here and that does hurt my feelings a little bit. But I love that area. It’s home. It’s where I grew up. All those memories. I just like the space. I like the speed limits out here. You know, we’re slacking in the Carolinas. The whole home of racing thing and the 55 miles-an-hour speed limit. What a joke. No, I enjoy the space out here. A lot of friends out here. Just like the area, proud of it. I know through the years, I think about my time spent on the race track here from the opening year to now sitting in the grandstands right there off of Turn 4 initially, and then eventually right over the start-finish line.
I’ve got more laps around this place watching from the aluminum bench than I do on the track I believe. I know. So it is cool just to think back to Cup races, Xfinity, Truck races, to IROC, to Indy car. The races we’ve watched here through the years, it’s pretty neat to go back and say we’re now on that racetrack and a part of that.
So just always neat to come back and kind of take that all in. I think the first time I drove our truck and trailer was on property here just moving from the parking lot inside going through the tunnel, trying not to tear the mirrors off my dad’s dually back then. Just little stuff that comes to mind. You don’t think about it, but I got a lot of really neat memories through the years of lots of different scenarios here.
B&B: What would you tell your 10-year-old self?
Buescher: My 10-year-old self. I think probably to relax a little bit. At that time, from like 10 to 15, I remember being on pins and needles at any given point because I always felt like you were just that the whole world was watching all the time. And I was trying to get to this level or at this point and I probably missed out on some fun. Just thought it had to be a little bit too structured. Now that’s not saying to go out and go crazy, right? But just opted out of certain times that could have been a little bit more fun. Probably would have been good memories to go back on.
I grew up with a lot of good buddies that had a lot of fun, but also this was consuming through the years. And wouldn’t go back and skip out on race days but try and enjoy some of the stuff in between.
B&B: Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.
Buescher: Yes, sir.