Chris Buescher has scathing words about NASCAR's playoff format after missing postseason

Despite a sixth-place finish in Sunday's Southern 500 and an 11th-place standing in the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season standings, Chris Buescher will not compete for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship. 

2024 marks the fourth time in five years that Buescher has missed the playoffs since taking over the No. 17 car for RFK Racing in 2020. 

However, Buescher's solid body of work in 2024 — including near wins at Kansas and Darlington in May — had the driver understandably fired up about missing the postseason, leading to a quote that seemed to have some vitriol behind it regarding NASCAR's playoff system. 

"Didn't quite get it done again, now we're on the outside looking in," Buescher told NBC Sports after Sunday's race. "Unfortunately, it's just the system we're all playing in. We had such a great year. We outran so many of these cars that are going to get to compete for a championship, but that's the system. We didn't work it right."

Buescher ranks higher in points than Daniel Suarez, Briscoe, Austin Cindric and Harrison Burton — all of whom won their way into the 2024 playoffs with victories at Atlanta, Darlington, St. Louis and Daytona, respectively. 

After a 2023 season in which Buescher won three races, 2024 has been somewhat disappointing, but it's not like Buescher didn't have his own chances to win races. 

The aforementioned defeats at Kansas by one one-thousandth of a second and Darlington to Tyler Reddick now loom larger than ever with the No. 17 team missing the playoffs. 

Buescher still has 10 more opportunities to win a race in 2024, but it will sting to see the aforementioned drivers that he ranks higher than compete for a title while Buescher aims to play spoiler.