"It was a learning experience": Chris Buescher touches on turning points in his NASCAR career following Watkins Glen win

Chris Buescher recently won the first race of his season at Watkins Glen. In the last three years, the Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver has emerged as a contender for wins on a regular basis.

After winning just a single race in the first six seasons of his full-time Cup career, Buescher has won five in the last three.

Because of this, he was asked post-Watkins Glen by a journalist about the changes that have happened in his personality and life that have led to this spell of success.

Buescher claimed he has been "underneath the RFK banner" for half his life. The #17 driver has been with RFK since 2020. He claimed that he has seen the struggles from the outside and also remembers the heyday when a driver could win 8-9 races a season.

"For me I have spent a lot of time in situations that would be underdog situations or just in an era where our team was not in its best place either, but none of that time was wasted. It was a learning experience. It’s focusing on how do you get better. It’s breaking the mindset of having an 18th place day and saying, 'Man, that was great progress. It was not. You know what, that was 18th place. That was a terrible day,'" Buescher described.

But he claimed that it got to a point where he'd been there for a long time, and then began to find "tiny victories" in it.

"You look back at it now and say that was a lot of learning experiences through the years, a lot of realizing that complacency may have struck you at different times, but you’re not happy with that. We’ve turned a massive corner at RFK. There’s a host of reasons for that for us to be in this spot now," he added.

Buescher added that RFK Racing is in a spot right now where they are a factor at a variety of racetracks, which has made it all fun for him.

Chris Buescher doesn't have one particular low point in his career, but many years of struggles

During his post-race press conference at Watkins Glen, Buescher was asked about a particular turning point in his career that stood out to him. The RFK Racing driver claimed there wasn't one in particular, but claimed there were many "really hard years."

"Very well documented hard years. It’s definitely tricky. You do your best to keep your head up and through all that we’ve come out in a much better place now," Buescher said.

During his initial years at Roush, Buescher only recorded three finishes inside the top 5. But since 2022, he's had five wins and 13 finishes inside the top 5. He added that everyone at RFK Racing has contributed to a host of factors in improving the state of the team, with the results reflecting that.

In fact, Chris Buescher claimed that RFK is in the best place it has been in the last 15 years.