Denny Hamlin heaps praise on Chris Buescher’s last-lap performance to win at Watkins Glen
Denny Hamlin loved what he saw from Chris Buescher during the final lap of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Watkins Glen. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin shared his reaction to Buescher getting past Shane van Gisbergen to win the race.
“The 17 (Buescher) executed a flawless esses. He beat SVG up the hill at the top of the esses, he was seventeen-hundredths of lap time off of SVG entering Turn 2, Denny Hamlin said. “Entering the Bus Stop, he was a tenth ahead. He gained two and a half tenths through the esses to give him a chance to get to SVG there.”
Chris Buescher won his first Cup Series race of the year on Sunday. It was big for him since he missed out on qualifying for the playoffs. Along with it being the first victory of the year, the Watkins Glen race was Buescher’s first road-course victory in his career.
“Oh, man, it’s such a good build, Ford Mustang is so great,” Buescher said after the race. “The long-run speed was phenomenal. I thought we lost it there on that last one. Just, man, to stay right there with him, that was the spot that he was better than us. He missed it. He missed it, so I tried to cross over. Went to cut and just hard race there. Just such an awesome finish. To be that good for so much at the end of the race, all race, to get a win, it’s good. We came here to be a spoiler. We’re going to do that where.”
Buescher was then asked if the win eliminated some of the steam from not being in the playoffs. “We would have liked to have won a couple of weeks ago, but this is huge,” Buescher said. “This is such a big win for us. Everybody at RFK has worked so hard. To finally get a road course win, man, we’ve been so close so many times. To finally pull that off, it’s fantastic.”
Buescher now has six victories in his NASCAR Cup Series career. During the regular season, the 31-year-old finished in the top five five times with two of those being second-place finishes.
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