Chris Buescher made a strong comeback on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway after missing last weekend’s inaugural Cup Series race due to COVID-19. The 29-year-old lost the Toyota/Save Mart 350 to Daniel Suarez by a margin of 3.849 seconds. The result was bittersweet for Buescher as he was too close to a second Cup win, but also a posting his best finish of the season.
During the post-race interview, Buescher spoke about his season-best second-place finish at Sonoma. He admitted that his #17 team did a great job and put in a fast #17 Ford for him as he was happy with the way he returned to the race track. He later expressed his disappointment at not securing a win in the end, as he should have made it happen in the final restart itself to go for the win.
Buescher said:
“This team did a great job and put a really fast Fifth Third Bank Mustang underneath me this weekend. What a way to return and come back to the race track, but I didn’t get the job done there at the end. I feel like we should have had the win and I didn’t get it. We were close, just needed more. I needed to make it happen on that restart and I didn’t.”
After securing his first top-5 finish of the season, the Prosper, Texas native called it an awesome run and said:
“If we can keep getting cars like this then a win will come. It was an awesome run, and I should be happy, but I am disappointed to be that close and not get it.”
“Just didn’t get it done when it counted”: Chris Buescher
Speaking about his comeback, Chris Buescher said it was an awesome recovery compared to his Circuit of the Americas outing. He later congratulated Daniel Suarez and said:
“It’s an awesome run. Awesome recovery from COTA, what we had there. Everybody back at RFK [Racing] is doing a great job. Hurts to be that close, but congratulations to [Daniel] Suarez. We were trying, trying to get him… Ran out of steam there.”
Chris Buescher lost three spots in the Cup Series points table after missing out on the inaugural Cup race at Gateway due to COVID-19. After a P2 finish at Sonoma, he gained two positions to grab 22nd place in the points table with 318 points.