Chris Buescher admits to Dale Earnhardt Jr. near catastrophic error on final straight at Watkins Glen

When Shane van Gisbergen clipped the bus stop in the overtime portion of Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen, Chris Buescher knew he had a pretty good shot at the win.

In fact, he presumed he already had it locked up. So much so that he nearly let the win slip from his grasp.

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“I was sitting there fist-pumping from inside the car and almost forgot to grab third gear,” Buescher explained on the Dale Jr. Download podcast. “Had to get that mindset back real quick and make sure I finished the job. But I’m obviously, a little bit of a sour taste in our mouth for celebrating too early after a couple months ago, and there I was doing it again, so… yeah, it was a really big moment. That was so cool for our entire group.”

Premature celebration aside, Chris Buescher earned a hard-fought win. It was a long time coming, particularly on a road course. But the win certainly wasn’t easy.

Buescher broke down the key moments when he was able to slip by van Gisbergen for the lead.

“I know one of our spotters, Tom, was telling me he had closed a little bit into (Turn) 6, but we’d been really good getting out of 6, so I thought we would be OK there,” Chris Buescher said. “So got off of 6 pretty good. I didn’t get all the way out to set up for 7 like I would have liked, but in doing that kind of guard to make sure he wasn’t right there on us. And then I think he had the same mindset, was put power down early and try to beat to the inside. I didn’t know it at the time, but I watched the video back and I seen he got awfully crossed up across the Turn 6 exit curve there. So really just gave us some breathing room.

“My Turn 7 was terrible exit, but I knew that I better get off the brakes because he was probably coming. So I rolled in and way overdrove the center but was just trying to cover and didn’t even make it all the way through 7 and [Mike Herman Jr.] told me that he missed the corner and that was it.”

Just like that, Chris Buescher was a winner. It was his first win in the NASCAR Cup Series since the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona a year ago.

The talented driver talked about what the win meant for him and his crew.

“We had such a fast racecar. Really just came alive after a couple laps. So that was truly enjoyable,” Chris Buescher said. “I think the tire really brought on some cool opportunities for a lot of the field. But we specifically for us, a lot of those changes really worked well for our group.

“Man, we finally got a road course win. We’ve been so good at these things, we’ve been so close. To finally actually pull it off was, that was special to me personally. I know the team’s jacked up and loved it, but that was a big check for my wins.”