What could have been a contentious weekend for NASCAR will end without much of a fuss, thanks to some graciousness on the part of driver Chris Buescher and his team.
Buescher fell to Kyle Larson by the narrowest margin in NASCAR history at the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway on Sunday night. The finish was so close that there was initially confusion on who actually won the race.
At first, it appeared Buescher had won before replay confirmed the win for Larson and it was announced at the Speedway.
Buescher’s crew chief, Scott Graves, then went to meet with NASCAR officials in the hauler, according to FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass. Graves said he accepted the decision that Larson is the winner, preventing any potential controversy.
“They showed us the picture of it and it is what it is,” Graves said. “It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, but as much as all these races are you’ve got to at least question it and make sure your understanding of everything going on there and be able to accept that decision. So we did.”
And there was grounds for potential controversy, to be sure.
Photo finish aside, Chris Buescher’s RFK Racing team tweeted a photo of the start-finish line following the race, appearing to illustrate that it was painted unevenly. That would obviously make calling a winner in a super-close scenario quite complicated.
But with Graves’ admission to NASCAR, the fuss should die down relatively quickly.
“I mean they showed us the picture they create using the lasers,” Graves said. “We were just wondering if they were using the painted line or not. They don’t, it’s actually they have a photosystem that is a lot more accurate than that.”
Even as he struggled to come to terms with what had happened Buescher himself handled things pretty gracefully in a post-race interview.
“I don’t know what to say right now,” Buescher said on the FOX broadcast. “I haven’t seen the replay other than just a picture. I sure can’t see it in that picture. That just sucks to be that close.
“It was a great finish for us, a really strong day. A lot of speed in this CASTROL Edge Ford Mustang. We really needed that. Needed a win more. I thought we might have had that one. Had a lot of speed there, firing off we were really good. And really all day. Really proud of that and had some good strategy to get us back up there. Tried to cover what I could and gave him half a lane too much, I suppose. But good, hard race right there down to the line. Yeah, just that hurts.”
All in all, it was a terrific weekend for NASCAR, which saw one of its unquestioned stars triumph in the most unlikely of manners, with a historic finish.
Buescher just happened to be on the wrong end of history.
“It’s one of those you go through huge emotion of we thought we won, you celebrate and then it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, no you didn’t win,'” Graves said. “That makes it hard for sure.”
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