Chris Buescher’s Gateway weekend hit a snag before his No. 17 Ford ever reached the starting grid.
NASCAR ejected two car chiefs Saturday after a pair of Cup Series cars failed pre-race inspection twice at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Buescher’s No. 17 RFK Racing Ford and Cody Ware’s No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Chevrolet each required three trips through inspection before being cleared. The two failures resulted in the ejection of No. 17 car chief Joshua Sisco and No. 51 car chief Dave Jones for the remainder of the race weekend.
Both teams also lost their pit-stall selection for Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300, leaving them with the final available stalls on pit road regardless of where their drivers qualified.
The consequences stop there, however. Both cars passed inspection on their third attempts, avoiding the additional penalties that would have come with another failure.
Chris Buescher Takes Inspection Hit During NASCAR Chase
The timing makes the setback particularly notable for Buescher.
The RFK Racing driver entered Gateway 11th in the Chase standings following the Southern 500 at Darlington. With only 10 races determining the Cup Series champion under NASCAR’s revived Chase format, giving away any potential advantage can matter.
Losing pit selection doesn’t carry the same weight as being sent to the rear of the field or serving a pass-through penalty after the green flag, but it does remove one strategic tool from Buescher’s team before Sunday’s 300-mile race.
Pit-stall selection is ordinarily determined by qualifying results. With that privilege gone, the No. 17 will instead be assigned one of the stalls left after the rest of the eligible field makes its selections.
Buescher’s Saturday didn’t immediately improve once his car cleared inspection, either. He was 35th in Cup Series practice and the slowest of the 16 Chase drivers in the session.
That puts more emphasis on what Buescher and RFK can find before Sunday’s race.
Cody Ware’s No. 51 Receives Same NASCAR Penalties
Ware’s No. 51 team went through the same inspection process.
After failing twice, Ware’s car eventually passed on its third attempt. NASCAR ejected Jones, his car chief, and stripped the team of its pit-stall selection.
Most importantly for both teams, neither failed a third time.
That distinction kept the inspection trouble from becoming a much larger problem. Buescher and Ware will not be required to serve a pass-through penalty at the start of Sunday’s race as a result of Saturday’s inspection failures.
The situation also comes only one week after another Chase contender ran into inspection trouble. Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 Team Penske Ford failed twice before the Southern 500 at Darlington, resulting in the ejection of his car chief and the loss of pit selection. Blaney recovered to finish fourth.
Buescher will now try to do something similar at Gateway.
His No. 17 is legal and cleared to race. But with his car chief gone, his choice of pit stall taken away and a championship position to protect, the weekend has already become a little more complicated than RFK Racing would have wanted.