Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Coke Zero 400/Firecracker 250 – Daytona International Speedway
NSCS/NXS Friday Press Conferences
Friday, July 3, 2015
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 60 Bit-O-Honey Ford Mustang, the current NASCAR XFINITY Series points leader by 29 points over second place Ty Dillon, spoke with media members at Daytona International Speedway prior to XFINITY Series practice sessions Friday afternoon.
YOU HAD A QUITE AN ADVENTUROUS TIME THIS MORNING, CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT? “Yeah, there is plenty of warm Bit-O-Honey in a bowl right behind our hauler in the XFINITY garage. It is way better after it has been sitting out in the sun, I will tell you from first-hand experience. This morning was fun. One of the planes that everybody flies on did not start this morning. That is not very comforting at 4 in the morning to get to the airport and they tell you that you are going to be delayed because they can’t get it running. There were a lot of teams moved and shuffled around. We all made it here, a little late, but we didn’t have much going on this morning anyway so everybody made it to the garage opening time.”
AFTER A STRONG RUN HERE IN FEBRUARY AND A STRONG RUN AT TALLADEGA, DO YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE PLATE RACING? DO YOU EVER FEEL COMFORTABLE PLATE RACING? “No. I don’t. I feel like we have held our own really well and we brought the same car to every plate race that I have run. It is a car that we know very well and has been fortunate enough to stay out of most of the trouble. There is so much chance involved and a little bit of luck and a little bit of just knowing where to be and where to place yourself to stay out of trouble. That is more or less the big part of it. I don’t worry about us coming here and having fast race cars. I know our Mustangs are quick every time we show up to these speedways. It wears you out mentally trying to make sure you stay out of trouble, especially last year we were in a little different situation after missing the first one to take as many chances as we could to get back up there. We are on the other end of the spectrum right now. We have to protect what we have. We have to be a little careful, not conservative because it is too early in the season to go into a conservative mode but we have to be careful when we come here and manage what we have.”
AT WHAT POINT IN THE SEASON DO YOU SIT DOWN WITH ROUSH AND LOOK INTO THE FUTURE AND WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE DOING NEXT YEAR? “I think my progression through stock car racing has been a little bit slower than a lot of guys that are racing or have been racing and I am okay with that. I think it is good. I like being able to get a lot of experience in each series before I transition into the next level. It helps me to get a better comfort level and is more seat time and I feel better prepared moving up. The handful of Cup race we ran with Front Row early this year was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. We are not scheduled to do any more of that this year and I honestly do not know if we have anything ready for next year on the Roush Fenway side. It will probably be several months yet down the road. We have to try to stay focused on this XFINITY championship right now.”
HOW MUCH OF THE ROULO BROTHERS IMPACT ON YOUR IN THE ARCA SERIES HAS CARRIED OVER TO YOUR TIME AT ROUSH FENWAY? “I would say a good amount. Again, staying in a series a certain amount of time, we spent four years in ARCA, two full time seasons with the Roulo’s. It was a good experience. We went to tracks with a game plan and spent a lot of time talking and studying the race tracks. In that series you have a little more free will when you get to the race track. You can walk the track and look around and really have a lot more down time I guess to study. It has really helped going into the next series. A lot of the aspects and characteristics of the stock car in general, being that the ARCA Series was my first major stock car experience. I can count on one hand the amount of late model races I ran and on the other the amount of ASA Truck races I ran. That was the extent of my big car experience before ARCA. It was a big learning curve but I feel like the amount of time spent there and what I learned with the Roulo Brothers carried over into the XFINITY side. It made is a smoother transition. We are still learning each and every week but I feel it gave us a good start.”
IS IT COMFORTING THAT YOUR COMPETITION, TY DILLON, IS SWITCHING CREW CHIEFS AND YOU SEEM TO BE ROCKING IT WITH YOUR CREW AND GOING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION? “There is a comfort level from our side knowing we have a good group of guys that have been together since the beginning of last year. The majority of them are the same people. We had a couple guys come off the road due to building families but it has been neat to have a group of guys and build that chemistry and they have done a great job. We get along really well. Everybody knows what their job is and they work towards it. I have established a good relationship with Scott and feel like we are getting a lot closer this year. We are starting races a lot closer balance wise with our Mustangs than we did last year. There was a lot of learning last year, especially early on. We were able to take that and really dial it I to where we are not starting a race in fifth and running back to 10th because we didn’t start where we need to be. We can start fifth and maintain or do better than that early on. It is comforting. It is still early in the season so we have a long way to go but I am very confident in our team and their ability to put a winning race car on the track each and every week.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE CUP RACES SCHEDULED? “No, we don’t.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE NEGATIVES TO MAKING THE JUMP TO CUP TOO QUICK? “I guess not to point out anything or any case in particular but I have looked back through the years and you see guys and girls come up too quickly and maybe not in their minds – at the time they maybe thought it was the right move but it seemed like more often than not if you got rushed into the next level and weren’t ready, that was your one shot. If you weren’t ready and the team expected you to be then if it didn’t go as well as it possibly could then you were sitting there trying to figure out what you would do for the rest of your career now as you have been labeled not ready for that jump. It seemed to hurt a lot of people. I can think of several in my head but I don’t want to call anybody out on it. I like the pace we have gone and it has been comfortable and I am still probably one of the older young guys anymore but I used to joke with Frank Kimmel in my last year in ARCA that I was the veteran with him. I was 19 years old and me and Frank were the old guys out there. It has been really good. I have really liked the pace we have gone and it has been pretty much planned from the start to take it easy and Jack has done a nice job with development. I think you see that going back to a lot of the drivers. Ricky (Stenhouse Jr.) being one that got his two XFINITY championships and even after the first one, Jack left him in the series to get more seat time and then make the jump and be more prepared. We are working each week to make our race cars better to where we can compete a little better and it is just tough to say. I like where we are at and I am glad we didn’t try to rush anything.”
THIS WEEKEND STARTS A 15 WEEK STRETCH FOR THE SERIES. CHAMPIONSHIPS HAVE BEEN WON AND LOST IN THIS STRETCH. HOW DO YOU STRATEGIZE? “We are not here to lay down or be overly conservative. We have to be careful. It is kind of the same mentality we have for Daytona that we have to take through the whole stretch. Looking at it, there are a lot of tracks in that stretch I am excited to go to because we can and have run well at them. As we go to these places for the second time we have a lot of notes to build off of and newer aspects of our cars that we have notes off and we aren’t just shooting in the dark. I like where we are at. I like going forward. I am looking forward to the road courses. Mid-Ohio was obviously really good last year. I am not a road course guru but I enjoy them and I think that makes a big difference. The month of August will be very busy but it should be a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to that month and this whole stretch. It is going to be tough but I think last year we had like 17 or 18 weeks in a row. It is almost taking it easy on us this year.”
YOUNG GUYS ALWAYS EXPIRE TO DO WELL. DO YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF WHAT HELPED YOU ALONG THE WAY OR WHAT MADE IT FOR YOU TO COME ALONG THIS FAST? “A lot goes into it. I worked really hard and many really long hours to get to this point but at the same time we had luck go our way and we had chance. We won a lot of races through the years, going back to the Legends Car days and I was able to meet some people along the way that because really good friends and still are to this day. Something as crazy as meeting a really good friend of mine now in Las Vegas and him having very heavily rooted ties back to the racing industry, it was just things like that. It was neat to see it all progress. Meeting the Ragan’s. Ken Ragan running 600 Racing as I was running in the Legend Car series. I actually got in trouble for rough driving one week and ended up in his office and lectured for several hours and it led to a friendship by the time it was all said and done. I started going over for Sunday cookouts while David was just getting his start in the 6 Cup car and just a lot of things went well through the years. I can talk about the upbringing and how I got to this point for a long time and really go into detail but it has been a nice transition. It has been a lot of fun and a lot of work. I am very fortunate to be here right now.”
A LOT OF FOLKS HAVE SAID THE CUP CARS AND XFINITY CARS HAVE NEVER BEEN CLOSER IN FEEL THAN THEY ARE RIGHT NOW. DID YOU FIND THAT TO BE TRUE AND DOES THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO DO MORE CUP RACING BECAUSE OF THE SIMILARITIES? “It is nice that they are more similar now and I feel like it will help make the transition a little bit easier. I don’t have any Cup races in the old configuration. I ran a lot of test sessions though back when we were still allowed to. It was a little harder transition back then. The races I ran, Talladega was kind of an exclusion because it was really similar there, all of these races you learn there are certain very distinct differences but you can adapt to it quickly and are able to go back and forth in practices and through the weekend pretty seamlessly. It is exciting that it is as close to our cars as possible but I am sure with the new aero package they are talking about that it might be getting ready to swing 180 here.”
