Chris Buescher turned a quiet day for his RFK Racing team into a much-needed second-place finish Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
Buescher’s No. 17 Ford Mustang Dark Horse team made the call to stay out for track position when the final caution flew on lap 215. It moved Buescher into the top five for the restart inside the final 92 laps. He did so while managing fuel over the final stint, which later allowed him to make a charge to second place .
“That’s huge,” Buescher said. “We’ve been able to lead races at any point in all three races leading up to this . We didn’t quite get there today, but certainly a great finish for our BuildSubs.com Ford Mustang. I’m really proud of everybody. This is a good try.”
Buescher qualified 14th for the Shriners Children’s 500 and earned an average running position of 12.4 throughout the afternoon. After not scoring any points in the first stage (finishing 17th), he was 10th at the end of the second stage.
In the final stage, the No. 17 was running 17th when the final caution came out, and the team elected to stay on track. It initially moved him to fourth, and he chose the inside lane to be third on the restart. Once crew chief Scott Graves and the team were confident on fuel, Buescher was given the call inside the final 20 laps to go hard.
Buescher took second place from Ty Gibbs with eight laps to go, but was 5.4s behind Christopher Bell at the finish.
“What thrills me is we were by no means perfect on balance, so we have a lot of room to make this thing better, which is awesome,” Buescher said. “It tells me we can go compete for that thing.”