Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing has been one of the revelations of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series. In the final five races of the regular season, Chris Buescher bagged three victories, including back-to-back wins in Richmond and Michigan, and a 1–2 finish with Brad Keselowski in Daytona. Going into the playoffs, RFK Racing and Buescher have a ton of momentum with them and they showed just how good they were at the Darlington Raceway on Sunday.

At the start of the 2023 season, neither RFK Racing nor Chris Buescher was really being considered to be challenging at the front of the pack. Yes, RFK Racing has been a strong team in the past but they weren’t at that level of late. Ever since Brad Keselowski joined, the team has been gradually moving in the right direction, and towards the end of the regular season this year, the months of hard work finally paid off.

Chris Buescher’s mentality is a plus for RFK Racing

In the first playoff race of the 2023 season at Darlington, RFK Racing cars finished high up the pack in strong positions. There is no doubt that Keselowski and Buescher will soon be challenging for race wins like they did earlier on. But fighting for wins and winning are two different things.

In Darlington, Keselowski finished in sixth place and Buescher finished third. An incredible result for RFK Racing, no question. But winners are never satisfied with anything apart from a win. After the race, Chris Buescher might not have been too down about his performance but he certainly believed that he could have finished even higher.

In the post-race interview, Buescher said that they did everything possible to get ahead of Kyle Larson who finished in first place. He was even pushed by his teammate Brad Keselowski during one of the restarts, but the RFK Racing car was just not as fast as the Hendrick Motorsports car.

“I don’t know, we tried to start on the front row, what, three times next to Larson, so we had our chance and got close when Brad pushed us one of those restarts, and just the outside had the momentum for sure, and they were really good,” Buescher said.

It has to be noted that no matter how much of an improvement RFK Racing had in the last few weeks, their rivals at Darlington were Hendrick Motorsports, one of the most successful racing teams of all time. It will take a lot more than a few weeks of steady improvement to beat them out.

But the fact that Buescher believed he could beat them proves that he has a lot of confidence in his car. His mentality of not settling for anything less than a potential victory is also a huge positive as that is how winners think.

“But also hurts just a little bit to be that close,” the 30-year-old added.

It seems like the winning mentality has been imbibed by the team thanks to their success at Richmond, Michigan, and Daytona. After the Daytona race, Brad Keselowski had said that winning one or two races was not the goal for RFK Racing, it was consistently fighting for championships.

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At Daytona, RFK Racing had their best day of the season as they closed the race with a highly impressive 1-2 finish. 1-2 finishes are rare in the world of motorsports and is a huge moment for any team achieving it, even more so for one like RFK.

However, co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski was quick to point out that while it felt great to win races and get 1-2 finishes, there has only been one end goal, being perennial title contenders.

“I’m proud of everybody in the team and certainly Chris for his efforts but, you know, the bigger picture is to have a sustainable race team that can win for championships for a few years to come and be a perennial championship contender,” the 39-year-old had said after the Daytona race.

It is always good to see teams stepping up to the challenge and fighting the big dogs for races and championships. RFK Racing looks like a team that are going to do big things in the future with Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski leading the charge.

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