Not yet, Buescher
Team glad driver getting experience with Front Row
Roush Fenway Racing isn’t being hasty with the driver, who is gaining experience with a partner team,
Chris Buescher’s improbable and highly unusual first Sprint Cup victory at Pocono Raceway two weeks ago had little impact on how Roush Fenway Racing executives evaluate their prospect and 2015 Xfinity Series champion.
The team already thought the 23-year-old was capable of winning at NASCAR’s highest level, President Steve Newmark told USA TODAY Sports, so winning in his work-study program at Front Row Motorsports on a fuel strategy gambit in a race halted prematurely because of rain and fog provided no new evidence.
But even though Buescher now has more wins than the entirety of Roush Fenway’s three-car Sprint Cup contingent and a simpler route to Chase for the Sprint Cup qualification than Trevor Bayne, Greg Biffle or Ricky Stenhouse Jr., he is unlikely to be brought back aboard his parent team next season.
“I don’t think that particular win monumentally changes the direction that we want to go with him,” Newmark said. “Our hope is to be in a position at some point to bring Chris back into Roush Fenway equipment at the Cup level. Right now we’ve got a great partnership with Front Row. I think they were excited that that possibility was available, because we felt Chris was ready to get to the Cup level after his Xfinity championship last year and thought that would be really good experience. And it’s proven to be that. We continue to have the same goals, and everybody always wants to know the timing.”
But there are no timetables, he said. Buescher won his Xfinity title with Roush, which announced a Cup technical alliance and services agreements with Front Row before this season.
“We don’t have that mapped out exactly, and we’ll kind of see how it plays out,” Newmark said of pulling Buescher back. “We’ll sit down with Front Row, with Ford each year as we go through this to kind of see what the right plan is for the following year.”
It is unlikely, Newmark said, that Roush Fenway will expand to four cars for 2017 because of mul- tiple factors. Sponsorship is always involved, and, he added, “We need to keep getting better on the racetrack.”
Entering the final idle week of the Cup season, Bayne leads the Roush contingent at 16th in points, two rungs from a playoff spot. Race winners and the remaining highest in the driver standings, if inside the top 30, make up the 16-person field. Tony Stewart is 26th but won at Sonoma Raceway. Buescher is three points from 30th-place David Ragan. Jamie McMurray, in 14th position, is the last of four drivers in position to advance on points.
Bayne has one Cup win — in the 2011 Daytona 500 as a 20- year-old farmed out to the Wood Brothers. Biffle hasn’t won since 2013 and last qualified for the Chase in ’14, and Stenhouse, a two-time Xfinity Series champion, is winless in his fourth full season in the series. Newmark would not discuss the duration or specifics of those drivers’ contracts.
Team owner Jack Roush has long engendered a competitive spirit among his drivers, embodied by them speaking by order of their success in weekly debriefs and a “Ricky vs. Trevor” marketing campaign when Stenhouse and Bayne were aspiring Xfinity Series drivers together. It remains to be seen how a win from a matriculating prospect will impact the Cup roster.
“I think there is value in Chris getting a win for the Ford camp, for the Roush camp,” Newmark said. “Selfishly, I want our guys here, for Roush Fenway, for our sponsors, I want for our guys to win. But I do think there is a sense of pride, when you step in the shop and it’s racers, where they don’t care about the business aspect of it. They’re racers, and they all felt a sense of pride because Chris is part of the family. We have the alliance with Front Row. It is our equipment they’re using in a lot of cases, so I do think it was a nice boost for the organization.
“You talk to Ricky and Greg and Trevor, they’re going to say, you know, they need to get that win, they need to get it in the next few weeks so they can make the Chase along with Chris.”
But if they don’t, Newmark said, the organization is amenable to throwing more of its resources behind Buescher’s long-shot bid for a championship.
“Some of that will depend on (Front Row owner) Bob Jenkins,” he said. “It’s their organization. We’ve made a lot of stuff available, and we will continue to make that available. Bob has done an incredible job staying in this sport. He’s shown a passion and a dedication, and he’s one of those owners you want in the sport. To the extent Chris stays in the Chase, they have the availability to come and ask for certain additional assistance, and we would definitely provide that.”
Longer term, the focus continues to be on improvement and consistency for when, Roush officials hope, Buescher is ready to make yearly bids for titles.
“We look at this season, and it has been really good for us,” Buescher said. “It has been a great rookie season.”