KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — One year ago, Chris Buescher was beaten by Kyle Larson at Kansas Speedway by the blink of the eye.
Less than a blink of an eye.
The official margin of victory for the spring race at the track was 0.001 seconds, the closest in NASCAR Cup Series history, and nobody has forgotten it. Not the way that Larson came slinging around the outside of Turns 3 and 4, nor how they were nose-to-nose at the wire, nor how broadcasters thought that Buescher had held him off for the win.
“Certainly at that moment, thought we got it just by my eye,” Buescher recalled this week. “I was probably a little biased.”
It wasn’t until they had nearly finished their cool-down lap that Larson learned he had won.
And that Buescher learned he had not.
“At the end of the day, it was, you know — it was ‘that’ close, right?” Buescher said. “Like I said, played a lot of things in our head that week on what we would have done different, and maybe it would have ended in a different result. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter until we have a chance to replay it.”
They get that chance on Sunday when the Cup Series returns to Kansas Speedway.
Larson is off to another sensational start to the season, with wins at Homestead and Bristol, and three consecutive top-5 runs after his fourth-place finish last week at Texas. He’s the betting favorite to repeat at Kansas and start a busy three-week stretch that includes another shot at the “the Double” — the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day later this month.
Buescher hasn’t had nearly the same success. His best finish has been a fifth at Phoenix, and in the last three races, he has not finished better than 18th, which is where he put his Ford for RFK Racing last week at Texas.
But perhaps a return to the Heartland will turn around some fortunes. Forget for a moment that he was oh-so-close to winning at Kansas last year, and remember that he not only finished second in the spring but ran a strong 11th in the fall race.
He also had a strong run at Kansas in 2015, when he won the Xfinity Series championship.
Buescher recalled that season this week when he was thinking back to last year’s run at Kansas. Sure, his crew may have been celebrating in his pit stall, thinking he had beaten Larson to the line. But the fella behind the wheel refused to begin celebrating until everything became official — which, of course, turned out to be a good idea.
“I’m not one to celebrate too early, because I just have bad feelings all the time,” Buescher said. “I go back to our championship in Xfinity in 2015. We went into the race, we had to finish 13th, I believe was the number, no matter what (Chase) Elliott did, and we finish that race — no matter what, it was a lock. And I was being yelled at for racing, you know? For trying to pass for sixth or seventh. I was being yelled at by everybody.
“Anyway, we come across the line and we finished the top 10, I think. And you know, it was better than 13th, I know that. And I knew it at the time. So I knew we were done. And I still couldn’t bring myself to celebrate until somebody said something.”
Buescher knows he will always be part of Cup Series history after that photo-finish a year ago. It edged the 2003 spring race at Darlington, where Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch banged doors for the lead, as the closest in Cup Series history. The margin in that case was 0.002 seconds, or double the time between Larson and Buescher at Kansas.
The spring race at Talladega in 2011 also had a 0.002-second margin when Jimmie Johnson beat Clint Bowyer to the finish line.
“We’re chasing a thousandth of a second every week. … You’re chasing fractions all the time. Ultimately, it’s what we signed up to do,” Buescher said. “If it was 1,000th of a second for fifth and sixth, it wouldn’t have stung. But you know, for a win, it makes you relive it for a little bit. But again, it’s just, it’s our world, right? We are always chasing these minute details.”
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