The Most Cursed Season An Athlete Has Ever Had
Quietly, Chris Buescher is the most persecuted man in the world
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If just ONE of the following eight events hadn’t happened, Chris Buescher would have made the NASCAR playoffs in 2024.
The odds of each of these events happening range from about a 1 in 100 chance to this-has-never-happened-before-so-its-impossible-to-quantify in a bazillion chance. All of them happening in a single season, all to the detriment of one guy, feels like a schizophrenic person speaking to you in a world where schizophrenia is contagious.
Chris Buescher is a good driver. He won three races last year. He had some bad luck this year, but even with that little bit of bad luck, he still finished 11th in the standings in the 2024 regular season. Downright above average.
In order to explain the circumstances of evil that befell Chris, I have to briefly explain the NASCAR playoff system. Points are given to every driver at the end of the race, starting with 1 point to last place, 2 points to second to last place, 3 points to third to last place, all the way up to 40 points for the winner. When there are ten races remaining in the season, only the top 16 drivers in the points standings qualify for the playoffs.
Unless someone else wins. If you’re 23rd in the standings and you rattle off a win in the regular season, you bump the 16th place guy out. Then, if in the following race, the guy 27th in the standings Even if you’re dead last in points, you win one race, you get a playoff spot. But the last place driver in the standings winning a race has never happened before, so no need to worry about that! And Chris won’t have to worry either, as long as he wins one of the 26 races in the long slog to the playoffs. And even if he doesn’t, as long as he runs, oh, top 12 or so, there will almost certainly be a spot for him on points.
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Race 2 - The Ambetter Health 400, Atlanta Motor Speedway, February 25, 2024
You might have seen this one. Close finishes at Atlanta are very common, but not like this.
That’s a three-wide photo finish. One one-hundredth of a second separates first from third. Three one-thousandths of a second, about five inches, kept Ryan Blaney from winning this race. Had Ryan Blaney won instead of Suarez, Chris Buescher would have made the playoffs.
Chris Buescher finished 9th. Very respectable day. But Suarez’s win was ominous for the guys who have respectable days, because Suarez is not supposed to be in the playoffs. If you asked even the stupidest nascar fan “Where will Daniel Suarez finish in the standings” he’d say “18th.” Daniel Suarez is absolutely addicted to running 18th. He’s the ultimate mid-pack driver. If you’re above Suarez in the standings you’re in the playoffs, if you’re below him either you suck or your car sucks. He’s NASCAR’s Mendoza line. I had to google where Mendoza was from because I was praying he wasn’t also from Mexico in the hopes that no one would misconstrue what I was saying about Suarez. Anyway…
Race 12 - The AdventHealth 400, Kansas Speedway, May 5, 2024
We’ll come back to this one.
Race 13 - The Goodyear 400, Darlington Raceway, May 12, 2024
It took a little bit of luck, but Chris Buescher is leading this race with 10 laps to go! The 45 and 6 cars, dominant all day, had made contact in front of Buescher, allowing him to easily pass them with what was a top 5 car on pure speed.
The 45 car of Tyler Reddick quickly ran Buescher back down, but time was running out to make the race-winning pass. Reddick, having led 174 of the 293 laps, must have felt very hard done by the racing gods. But when Reddick thought he was defying the racing gods for a relatively minor slight, he was actually serving as their unwitting pawn in a much, much more infernal punishment on Chris Buescher.
Reddick tries what in racing is called a “low percentage” move on Buescher and ends up driving both of their cars into the wall. They both get flat tires, and they both finish in the 30s. Tyler Reddick would win 2 races in the regular season and be top of the points standings at the start of the playoffs. He didn’t need to win this race. And neither did Buescher. If Chris had merely finished the race where he was running, in 3rd instead of 30th, he would have 27 more points, and 9th place in the final regular season standings. Had Chris Buescher finished 9th in the regular season standings, he would have made the playoffs.
Race 15 - The Enjoy Illinois 300, World Wide Technology Raceway, June 2, 2024
Christopher Bell had a fluke engine failure with 15 laps to go, handing the lead to Ryan Blaney. Engine gremlins are rare, especially when it’s the dominant car with less than 30 laps to go in the race, but These Things Happen. Blaney was a solid second place car, and had earned an easy win, when, coming out of turn 4 to take the white flag:
Austin Cindric is, to be polite, slow. He runs twelve to twenty places behind his teammates every race. Except for this race, when he ran one place behind his teammate. And that teammate's pit crew somehow was unaware they had failed to fill his fuel tank on the stop before the last pit stop. So no one on Blaney’s crew informed him that he needed to save fuel. And he only needed to save another lap. That would have been very doable. Fuel-saving races have been a part of NASCAR for its entire history, but this wasn’t a fuel-saving race. Everyone else made it to the end on fuel. Only the leader ran out, and only with one lap to go. It’s one of the strangest ways anyone has run out of fuel in a race. These Things Don’t Happen.
Bell and Blaney were both race winners, and both winning have no bearing on Chris Buescher making the playoffs. But 19th place Austin Cindric? Who is, to be polite, slow? Did I mention that? That’s absolutely massive. Cindric had one other top five finish all year, and second place behind Blaney would have been his best finish since the 2022 Daytona 500, which he won. Had Cindric not snapped his 85 race winless streak, Chris Buescher would have made the playoffs.
Race 19 - The Ally 400, Nashville Superspeedway, June 30, 2024
Just like in Race 15, we’re one lap away from a very normal ending, and a very normal winner who is above Chris Buescher in the standings and has other race wins. Denny Hamlin has by far the best car, and is coasting to a win when Austin Cindric (hello again!) spins out. If he waited 10 more seconds to spin out, Hamlin would have taken the white flag, meaning there would be only one lap to go, and that spin would have ended the race. But because there were 2 laps to go, the rules state we go to overtime. We bunch the field back up, and do a 2 lap sprint to the finish. And if we crash before the leader takes the white flag, we do it again.
Just like in Race 15, it’s time for the best cars to run out of gas. Fuel has been a concern for most of the leaders, but they should have enough for one overtime, probably even two overtimes. Not five though. But that’s okay, because five overtimes has never happened! Until today. A record breaking five overtimes sees just about the entire field run out of gas. The leaders either pit for fuel after the second overtime, or run out of gas in the third overtime.
By the fourth overtime, the cars that had been running in the teens and twenties have assumed the lead. The most mid of these midpack cars is the 22 of Joey Logano. He’ll go on to be 15th in points, and was a 15th place car all race. And if there were merely two overtimes instead of five, that’s where he would have finished. But Logano won. Had Logano not won, Chris Buescher would have made the playoffs.
Race 20 - The Grant Park 165, Chicago Street Course, July 7, 2024
Back to back freak weeks here, and we’re firmly in Act of God territory. NASCAR’s second ever race on a street course was beset by massive rain storms the previous year, but all week, the forecast looks sunny. Even the morning of the race, with storm clouds in the area, the chance of rain never went above 20%.
Mere seconds after the “Drivers, start your engines” command, a massive rain cell hits the track. And because this is a street course, NASCAR is willing to race in the rain. For a few laps at least, until they stop the race with a red flag. Because it looks like this:
It’s not entirely the rain’s fault, but this is what happened to the two best cars, driven by probably the two top road course talents in the series:
The rainfall is just the right amount, and the track dries just the right amount, that Alex Bowman’s risky strategy to stay out on old wet weather instead of pitting for dry tires pays off, and he breaks an 80 race winless streak. Bowman would go on to finish 13th in the standings. Had Bowman not won, he would have missed the playoffs, and you know the rest.
Race 25 - The Coke Zero Sugar 400, Daytona International Speedway, August 24, 2024
Shortly before the start of the 2024 season, NASCAR changed a rule. Any full time driver that won a race could compete in the playoffs. Previously, a driver had to be in the top 30 in points for their win to count for the playoffs, the idea being to prevent fluke winners from taking a playoff spot they didn't deserve. No such fluke winner from the back of the pack had ever actually been excluded this way. The closest such case came in 2016 at Pocono, when a massive fog cloud rolled in during a green flag pit sequence, and the race was red-flagged while being led by a rookie driver 31st in the standings named Chris Buescher.
Chris would not have qualified for the playoffs unless he raced his way into the top 30 in points in the following three weeks, which he did. It was an impressive feat for a rookie driver in underfunded equipment. But, thankfully, the draconian rule barring drivers outside the top 30 from the playoffs was revoked this year. I’m sure Chris is happy about that.
Harrison Burton is 34th, the last place driver in the cup series. He has been last or second to last the entire season, and has shown no signs of improvement. He has already lost his ride in the cup series last year. There is no reason to think that the last place, lame duck driver could win a race, even one as chaotic as the summer Daytona race. It’s never happened before. These Things Don’t Happen.
But what better way is there to celebrate the new change in the NASCAR rulebook than by testing it beyond its absolute breaking point and putting a total shitbox in the playoffs? It took multiple ten car pileups and more than half the field not finishing on the lead lap, but Burton was the last man standing.
Because of a scheduling change for the 2024 season, the Coke Zero Sugar 400 was not the final race of the regular season. Every other year, the wildcard race served as every driver’s Hail Mary ticket to the playoffs if they could survive the carnage. If the regular season ended after this year’s Coke Zero 400, Chris Buescher would be in the playoffs. 13 playoff spots for the race winners, and 3 spots available on points, with Buescher occupying the final spot. But this year is different. It’ll be settled at Darlington, the track where he almost won in May. All he has to do to make the playoffs is not give up 21 points to Bubba Wallace and just hope that we don’t see a win from-
Race 26 - The Southern 500, Darlington Raceway, September 1, 2024
Chase Briscoe (17th in points).
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For the second time in 2024, Chris Buescher got out of his car after a race at Darlington apoplectic, but completely defeated. The second time, after the Southern 500, there was no one person to be mad at. A full third of the cup series field had indirectly or directly been responsible for him missing the playoffs. But when he was taken out of the race by Tyler Reddick, he had one target:
We’ve scarcely seen this anger out of Buescher in his career. Compared to the rest of the garage, he’s one of the least aggressive and least prone to outbursts. And, as much as late race wrecks can hurt, These Things Happen. Something else must be triggering this. Maybe something happened last week?
Race 12 - The AdventHealth 400, Kansas Speedway, May 5, 2024
Remember back at Atlanta, that finish many people were calling “the best finish in NASCAR history?” This was closer than that. It took 8 weeks for it to be one-upped. Photo finishes like that are a These Things Happen now, all at the expense of one man.
This was such a close finish that the scoring tower at the track listed the 17 as the winner, because the scoring sensors on the cars are in the back of the cars for some ungodly reason, and the back of Buescher’s car crossed the line before Larson’s did. NASCAR had to go to a photo review to see which car’s nose touched the line first, and we all found out in real time that the start-finish line at Kansas is painted crooked.
The seeds of anger and futility were planted a week before that Kansas race, at Darlington, a track that has always had a . The extremely difficult track that has been called by many “The Lady in Black” (such drama queens in this sport) has a very narrow racing groove up against the wall, and a very abrasive surface. It’s 100 miles from the nearest big city. It has a strange egg shape and four uniquely-shaped turns. It was built that way because it awkwardly borders a swamp. I think one of the Racing Gods lives in that swamp. And I think He heard Chris that day. When Chris berated Tyler Reddick for racing him the way he did, and yelled that “This race means more to us,” the racing god that lives deep down in the black sludge outside turn 4 said “I’ll show you what it means.”
Epilogue
Chris Buescher won! He did it in sensational fashion, about twelve days after the bulk of this piece was written. Go figure.
Still, it’s a writer’s job to find the bummer lining in this. I can make the case that, had he qualified for the playoffs in the first place, the win at Watkins Glen would have advanced him to a later round in the playoffs. He would have finished somewhere between 8th-10th versus 17th in the final season standings. That’s a difference of several million dollars in prize money for the driver/team.
Not convincing enough? I’m inclined to agree. Racers can go their entire careers without being involved in a finish like the one at Watkins Glen. Does that make this a bunch of spilled ink over nothing? Eh. Can’t win ‘em all.
for a second there I was very confused, but this is cool. Thanks for the sub!