Chris Buescher doesn\u2019t pull punches. When the Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver is asked a question by the media, he gives a thoughtful, honest, and transparent answer, even if it isn\u2019t the most popular one in the eyes of NASCAR or his fellow drivers and teams.<\/p>\n
One of the hottest topics in the Cup Series over the past few weeks has been the specter of potential race manipulation. If someone can come up with something clever and sneaky to give themselves or their teammates an advantage, they\u2019re probably going to do it. That has been a NASCAR hallmark for more than three-quarters of a century.<\/p>\n
During his media availability<\/a><\/strong> this week prior to Sunday\u2019s Cup playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, Buescher<\/a> <\/strong>was asked about what can and can\u2019t be said over team radio. Although he isn\u2019t in contention after missing the playoffs this season, the Texas native addressed how certain comments might be perceived by those listening in \u2014 particularly NASCAR officials \u2014 who could interpret them as signs of potential race manipulation.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it did make a difference,\u201d Buescher said after hearing NASCAR officials caution teams last weekend in Las Vegas. \u201cI don\u2019t have any direct communication for what\u2019s been talked about, but I know it has made it through our competition side.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that (the topic of race manipulation) has made it into the media and I think the message we\u2019ve gotten is clear enough to say, \u2018Do it at your own risk, but you\u2019re not gonna like the result? Ultimately, I think that\u2019s fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Buescher recalled an incident last year at Martinsville that still sticks in his mind and raises questions about whether race manipulation may have taken place.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a terrible scenario at Martinsville last year with cars just riding and blocking basically the entire racetrack,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had instances where we\u2019ve seen cars just straight-up lift and not push rows at speedway races. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s blatant enough to be called this time around if there is radio chatter ahead of that, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a hard line for anybody to police and you can always say that balance was an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Different Verbiage Can Also Have Different Meanings or Interpretations<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the matter of how comments made over the radio between the driver, crew chief, and spotter are perceived in terms of meaning and intent.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard one of the things that came from the ROVAL was something that I actually got told in a purely selfish 17 team state of mind was, \u2018Alright, save tires here. Don\u2019t push forward in case we have a late-race restart.\u2019 And then I hear that was one of the things that somebody else said later on that almost got them in really big trouble,\u201d Buescher continued.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m sitting here like, \u2018Well, alright, we realistically wanted to make sure we had some amount of tire race (left) for a late-race restart.\u2019 That was not to help anybody other than ourselves, so it\u2019s certainly a hard place to officiate from. But I think that the warning is loud enough and clear enough that nobody wants to be on the other side of NASCAR having to make a judgement call.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Buescher doesn\u2019t pull punches. When the Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing driver is asked a question by the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":312822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[55732,1406,157651,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-312821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-chris-buescher","9":"tag-nascar","10":"tag-roush-fenway-keselowski-racing","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115393961921852871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}