In mid-January, RFK Racing hosted a media tour at the team’s 5,000-square-foot facility in Concord, N.C., to highlight its all-new Human Performance Center.
RFK co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski led a group of media members through the state-of-the-art fitness complex, elaborating on the necessity of having a space where drivers and pit crew can train during the week.
Keselowski believes building the facility is an important step for RFK’s trajectory in the NASCAR Cup Series and that it will boost their efforts in the coming season. Both he and Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Ford Mustang, experienced a myriad of ups and down last year — a trend Keselowski hopes to stabilize.
Buescher was responsible for bringing the team to victory lane last season as he collected a win at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. He also ended the year with eight top-10 finishes. He maintains faith that RFK’s recent changes, combined with momentum from his sprinkling of success in 2022, will make the difference in 2023 as he enters his second full season with the team.
Buescher addressed that faith among other items during the media session:
Q: With the development of facility like this, what does that show you about the commitment that RFK has made to be a top-level team?
BUESCHER: I think it’s hats off to everybody at RFK and a lot to Brad (Keselowski)’s vision of bringing this thing up and continuing to improve it. You know, I think that it’s not something that we’ve seen around here for many years.
I shouldn’t speak to Jack (Roush)’s facet necessarily, but it was, how do we make race cars go fast? And anything we need to do to make race cars go fast, that’s what we’re going to put everything behind.
I think that Brad has a vision for several other things that that do matter as well. And that’s, you know, give your athletes on pit road a place to have pride in coming to and show potential members that we are serious about making good advances to give them the best possible space to improve their craft. You know, the pit practice road outside here has been here a long time and is a very nice space, but this is a part that was very lacking.
Brad took notes very early on and has really set the standard that this change is going to continue to work its way through the entire shop. And it’s a pride thing. You know, the car has changed and what we work on during the week has changed, and now it’s about how we improve all of our processes and how do we work in the details so that we can be better on the race track during the weekend.
Q: You talked a lot about Brad’s vision for this. What about his involvement in this has excited you as a driver to believe that you can be a contender?
BUESCHER: You know, having shiny paint on the walls doesn’t make race cars go faster, necessarily. But it’s trying to put that mentality throughout the entire shop of, we’re going to make our stuff really nice and that starts with keeping our facility really nice.
I think it’s just a matter of setting that standard that we have to focus on every little detail along the way to get the ultimate goal, to get the end product.
Q: And then last question, talk a little bit about your expectations for the season, based on your strong finish last year.
BUESCHER: I mean, every year we’ll sit here and talk about how we’re going to win every race and a championship. And that is the goal. But realistically, our sport is different.
I’ve talked about this a lot through the last several weeks how, on a success level in our sport, a dominant season means maybe you win 25 percent of the time. That’s a 75 percent loss. That’s high. And that’s the people that are the happiest on their season, right?
So, it’s hard to chase that perfection and that win every week.
But you have to chase it, you have to work towards it. And ultimately, that’s where we’ve got to get to our mindset at. We had the ability and the speed to be in contention for many wins last year. We got one, but we were in contention for several others throughout the end of the year. And ultimately, that’s what you’ve got to ask for.
It’s, how do we get to those positions? And then looking back on it, how do we capitalize on those weeks to turn them into trophies? And that’s what we’re working on. I think we’re in a good place, we have good momentum and we’re not sitting here starting from scratch this year.
But I mean, no team is. Every team’s got their notebooks that they can go back and look at, but I think our progress was well documented here. I think we have a lot of good things coming that are really going put us into a solid 2023.
Keyword: 1-On-1: Chris Buescher Weighs In On RFK’s New Facility