Saturday Watkins Glen Notebook
Aug. 6, 2016
Notebook Items:
·
Chris Buescher confident he’ll make the Chase
·
Turnabout is fair play for Truex
·
Gordon disappointed in qualifying effort
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
Chris Buescher confident he’ll make the Chase
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Chris Buescher is still on the outside looking in, but probably not for long.
After
last Sunday’s unexpected NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory at Pocono
Raceway, Buescher is still 31st in the standings, six points behind
30th-place David Ragan. In order
to qualify for the Chase, Buescher must be in the top 30 after the 26th
race of the season, scheduled for Sept. 10 at Richmond.
Buescher is confident he can meet the challenge.
“If
we look at it now, we’re in good shape to be heading forward,” Buescher
said on Friday at Watkins Glen International, site of Sunday’s Cheez-It
355 (2:30 p.m. ET on USA).
“Our cars have been a lot better each and every weekend. The last six
or seven or eight weeks, we’ve been unloading with a lot better speed
and finishing better and staying running better in the race.
“And
when we look ahead, after this weekend we’re going to a lot of places
for the second time finally, so we have a good notebook between (crew
chief) Bob (Osborne) and myself.
With our first year working together, we feel like we have better
chemistry now and can pick up speed in the next five races leading up to
the Chase.”
For
one thing, there are no more superspeedway races before the Chase
starts. Buescher crashed out of all three restrictor-plate events this
season, with his only other DNF coming
at Kentucky.
Henceforth,
Buescher also will get better equipment on a consistent basis from
Roush Fenway Racing, which farmed him out to Front Row Motorsports for
his rookie year in the Sprint
Cup series.
“As
we go forward, we have had pretty awesome support from Roush Fenway
this year,” Buescher said. “A lot of the races we have been kind of
half-and-half on what we’re doing,
but as we look at the Chase coming up here, I think we’ll be able to
try to step up our program as much as possible.
“I
know when we landed from Utah (where Buescher attended a refresher
course on road racing earlier this week), our 34 team was still in the
shop at 10:30 at night to make sure
we had the best piece possible for the Glen this weekend. I know the
team is working as hard as they possibly can to make sure we’re running
better.”
With that in mind, Buescher is optimistic about making the Chase.
“We’ll get there,” he said.
TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY FOR MARTIN TRUEX JR.
Confident
in making the final 12 during Saturday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
qualifying session at Watkins Glen International – based on a strong
showing in Friday’s practice
– Martin Truex Jr. waited until late in the first round of knockout
qualifying to make his only run.
The
plan went awry, however, when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. entered the track at
the bottom of the esses when Truex was approaching that series of
snaking turns. In avoiding Stenhouse’s
No. 17 Ford, Truex lost valuable time and failed to advance to the
final round.
“There
is nothing wrong with trying to do it in one run if people on the race
track were paying attention to what’s going on,” said Truex, who will
start 14th in Sunday’s Cheez-It
355 at the Glen. “You’ve got somebody that just pulled out of the pits
and sees you coming… literally, I don’t understand what the 17 was
thinking. He was just leaving pit road and he wasn’t in a hurry to get
anywhere.
“It
doesn’t make a whole lot of sense why he would’ve done what he did
except for the fact that he just wasn’t paying attention. It’s a shame.
We still almost made the second
round. I don’t know what you can do about it. Our car is fabulous, and
the guys have done a great job all weekend. Certainly hard to win from
there, but it’s possible, and we won’t give up until the race is over.”
Truex
got his revenge. As he was rolling on his cool-down lap, he blocked
Stenhouse’s progress, again in the esses, relegating the No. 17 to a
30th-place qualifying effort.
“We
got in the way of the 78 there on his lap, thinking that he was done,
and then so he in turn returned the favor, which I expected,” Stenhouse
said. “It’s nothing on him.
We just did a bad job at qualifying there today.”
JEFF GORDON DISAPPOINTED IN QUALIFYING EFFORT
Jeff
Gordon thought he had a top-five car for qualifying on Saturday, but it
didn’t work out that way. In his third race as a fill-in driver for
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is sidelined
with concussion-like symptoms, Gordon had to settle for the 21st
starting position.
“I
was pretty disappointed,” Gordon said of his qualifying runs at the
2.45-mile Watkins Glen road course. “We were fast (in Friday’s
practice). I felt like we were going to
have no issues moving through to Round 2. I was more thinking about
whether we could get in the top five. That’s not the way it went for our
Axalta Chevrolet.
“The
first run out I was a little conservative, just because I knew the grip
level was down (thanks to overnight rain that washed rubber from the
track). I just wanted to put
a solid lap together and hit every corner. I got a little bit loose at
the top of the esses. The second time out, I tried to attack a little
bit more, and unfortunately, when I did that, I missed Turn 1 and my
shift point, and that kind of just got us off
the whole time.”
Nevertheless, Gordon was optimistic about his prospects for Sunday’s Cheez-It 355.
“I
like this race track,” said Gordon, a four-time winner at the Glen. “I
like the repave. The tire is a little tricky, but the team has done an
excellent job and I’m having
fun out there shifting and turning right and left…
“We’ve
got our work cut out for us, but we’ve got a race car just like we have
every weekend – so far I’ve been in the car – that can work its way
forward.”
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