“We are not quite competitive to win here at COTA”: Chris Buescher delivers a hard-hitting reality check after a ‘hard day’ with Ford

Chris Buescher secured a seventh-place finish in the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix at COTA after starting the race down in the 24th spot. Despite a decent finish and being the highest placed Ford driver on the grid, Buescher called his outing at COTA a 'hard day' of work and admitted the car didn't have the pace to be anywhere close to victory contention.

During the post-race interviews, Buscher explained that his car has the pace to fight for victories at other road courses, but that was not the case at COTA.

"It was a really hard day; a lot of ups and downs. We never got ourselves into the track position that we wanted to. We want to be better... I just feel like we are not quite competitive enough to win here at COTA," Buescher noted (via SpeedwayDigest).

"We have been very close at all of the other road courses — we feel like we have a chance to win at the others. We need to make a couple more tweaks to our Mustang here at this place. A good showing for this new course. We stayed out of the melee, for the most part, and I am proud of everyone on this Fastenal team. They did a good job today," he added.

The top Ford cars of Team Penske finished the race in P19 (Ryan Blaney), P24 (Joey Logano), and P25 (Austin Cindric), further backing Buescher's suggestion of Fords not being at their best at COTA.

Nonetheless, Buescher's P7 result reflects his success at road course racing. According to a recent post shared by NASCAR Insights on X (formerly Twitter), Chris Buescher has the best average finish (8.82) on road courses since the introduction of the Next Gen car in 2022.

In the 15 races Buescher has competed in on road courses since 2022, he has secured one race win, which came at Watkins Glen last season. Including this win, he has three podium finishes, four top-five, and 12 top-ten finishes.

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A look back at Chris Buescher's first road course victory

One of the best drives of Chris Buscher's Cup series career came last year at Watkins Glen International, where he took his first road course victory. During that race, the 32-year-old driver built up a massive four-second lead over the rest of the field. However, a caution triggered by Harrison Burton’s blown tire erased his advantage, forcing him to defend his position on the restart.

As the race went into overtime, Chris Buescher had to deal with pressure from Carson Hocevar. Meanwhile, Shane van Gisbergen (SVG), a proven road course winner and a three-time Australian Supercars champion, was right behind, waiting for an opportunity to snatch the lead.

On the final restart, SVG made an aggressive move into Turn 1, nudging the RFK driver wide to momentarily take the lead. However, he overshot the corner, allowing Chris Buescher to pull off a crossover move in the next turn. The latter then managed to hold on to his lead and break his 37-race winless streak.