MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
SOUTH POINT 400
LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 NATURAL LIGHT SELTZER CAMARO ZL1, met with media to discuss the change in dynamic with the start of the Playoffs, what has led to the recent success this season, the outlook for the 2020 season, and more. Full Transcript:

HOW IS YOUR CONTACT STATUS LOOKING FOR 2020?
“Yeah, we’re getting there. Working through everything. It’s a heck of a question to start off (laughs), but we’re in progress. I hope everything stays on track and we can get to the point where we are good to go. But it’s just that time of year again. It seems like more and more, it’s just a year-by-year thing for a lot of people. So, it’s just where we are at right now.”

TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE DYNAMIC OF RACING KNOWING THAT THE WHOLE CHAMPIONSHIP PLAYOFFS ARE STARTING THIS WEEK TOO. DOES IT CHANGE ANYTHING WHEN YOU’RE ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO WIN THE RACE ANYWAYS?
“It changes some things, but in the large overlook of it, they don’t take away all of the other race cars and just let the Playoff drivers out there to race. So, they are going to have to deal with everyone on track. We are all still out here trying to win races, there are still trophies up for grabs, and there are points on the line for everybody whether you’re in the Playoffs or not. Especially early on here, you race your own race. You are somewhat aware of who it is, but if somebody sets out there and thinks they are going to be able to take advantage of everybody just because they are in the Playoffs, it’s not going to end well for them in the end. For them, that’s something they have to make a decision on. As we get closer to Homestead, I would say it gets a little bit harder to race because you do have to realize there is a lot on the line. Starting off right now, we are all racing. So, we will go out there the next handful of weeks and go do the same thing we do every week. We come out here to try to win races. It’s been a good couple of months for us. It’s been a good year, but a good couple of months. We’ve been able to run up there in the top-15 and top-10 a handful of times. For us, that’s promising that we will be around Playoff drivers. So, we’ll have to deal with that, race them clean like we try to do every weekend and put up a hard fight.”

TALKING ABOUT YOUR GOOD YEAR, THE SPEED CHARTS WILL SHOW THAT YOU HAVE, POUND FOR POUND, THE 21st FASTEST CAR ALL YEAR. YET, YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED OUTSIDE OF THE TOP-20 SINCE I THINK DOVER BACK IN THE SPRING. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS LEADING TO THAT SUCCESS?
“It’s not all me. I’ll be the first to give a lot of credit to our crew. They have done a terrific job this season. The whole organization has been able to put fast cars on the race track and make the most out of it every weekend. Trent Owens has done a terrific job throughout the entire season and we’ve had some good pit calls and pit strategy. We’ve been able to have race cars that on speed charts might not be the fastest on the race track, but we have cars that have raced really well and driven really well. It has been something that has been a really hard balance to find with everything and the new package this season. What we’ve done is not completely on purpose, but we’ve had really good raceable cars with a little bit expense of outright speed early in runs. For us, that has enabled us to get going on restarts. Really have a lot of downforce and everything we need to make the car more aggressive versus being on top of the race track and just hoping you get that speed on the end of the straightaway. There are definitely times where we wish we had more outright speed and qualify better, which would make a lot of our weekends a lot easier if we could have gotten a decent pit stall along the way. The last couple of weeks, we’ve made some huge gains that have led to a lot better practice speed and some really good qualifying efforts to enable us to get better stalls. Kind of coming back around and keeping the drivability in the car, but finding the speed has been what we have been after the last couple of months now. We’ve come up on a couple of things that have done just that. It’s all of us, it’s a big group effort and everyone has just done a really good job. The pit crew has done a really nice job and we’ve been solid on pit road this season. Everything comes together and it adds up at the end of these races. We are able to keep our cars clean and keep the fenders on it. When aero is as important as it is, you can’t go out there, tear the race car up and expect to have the speed you need at the end and the drivability to get the finishes. It’s just a combination of a lot of things and we’ve been able to outperform where a lot of people think we should and be able to run right where our goal was at the beginning of the season, which was be able to run in the top-15 every week. We’ve been able to do that at least half of the races this season. I think we finished 16th like six or seven times, so everyone back at the shop gives me a hard time about that, but we’ve been really close to our goal that we set out to do at the beginning of the season. The second part of it was that the shot of making it into the Playoffs and we did not get that done, so that will definitely be something that with the performances we have had this season, we would have had a lot better shot of it. We’ll go after that next year.”

WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING FOR PERFORMANCE GAINS, YOU GET TO THIS POINT IN THE SEASON AND YOU KNOW YOU’VE ONLY GOT TEN MORE WEEKS OF ON-TRACK ACTIVITY. IS THAT A CONCERN OR DO YOU LOOK AT IT AS ONCE THE SEASON IS OVER, WE CAN GO DO THE SIMULATION WORK AND IMPROVE SINCE WE AREN’T TRAVELING EVERY WEEKEND?
“I definitely don’t think we look at the last ten as a disadvantage or not bummed about it coming to an end. I don’t think that all the simulation time in the world, all the wind tunnel time, everything else you can do, it’s not on-track results. It’s not in traffic with other race cars around you, it’s not the same. It’s very helpful and there’s no doubt about that. There are some really talented people that get it really close in the real world. It’s like going and driving the simulators; at the end of the day, it’s not the real thing. It’s as close as we can come without being able to go test and all the rules that are in place to cut that cost. It’s really hard at this level. It’s the best of the best at what we do and trying to gain on teams, especially for us being a medium-sized team trying to get out there and keep up with teams that we know have more resources. We’ve done a terrific job of keeping up with them. To start the season the way we did, I was extremely proud of our group. Being able to start with a top-10 at Atlanta was really big. Really early in the season, we knew we did our homework through the off season to be ready for this and we’ve been able to keep up through the season as well. Some of the gains we’ve found here recently is something that we look to try and tune through the next ten races. It’s something that you look at the off season as a chance to go into your simulator and wind tunnel time to be able to fine tune. With next year being the same package and not having all those changes, it basically takes the guess work out of it. We know what we are getting ready to sign up for and we can keep working on it. It’s just really hard to replace on track time. Practice and qualifying is pretty minimal as far as getting the results that you need. It takes getting in the race, getting around cars and really putting yourself in a position to learn and figure out what the car does in those situations. That’s where you get the best data from and we have ten more opportunities to gather all we can to hit the ground running through the off season.”

ARE YOU TALKING TO ANYONE ELSE BESIDES JTG DAUGHERTY RACING AND ARE YOU OPTIMISIC ABOUT RETURNING THERE? DO YOU HAVE OTHER OPTIONS?
“We are talking and trying to get through this process. For me, it’s more of a private situation and we’re going through the motions here. We’ll know something in the next couple of weeks. It’s getting to that point.”