Buescher gets a break in win at Iowa Speedway

NEWTON - Chris Buescher saw it happen right in front of him.

The break he needed to have a shot at winning the NASCAR Xfinity Series 3M 250 at Iowa Speedway came as then-leader Chase Elliott was entering Turns 3 and 4 and coming to the white flag. Jamie Dick and Ross Chastain - who had a different, scarier incident on Saturday - hit the wall on lap 248, triggering a green-white-checker finish.

It also led to a decision on whether or not to pit for the leaders. Elliott didn't, Buescher and all the other leaders did. The result was Buescher going from third to first before Turn 1 on the final restart and cruising from there for his first win of the season. Elliott had to settle for second.

'I was waiting on that break. We needed that; it was exactly what we needed to happen,” Buescher said. 'When that caution came out, it happened right in front of me. I was like, ‘all right, this is it. This is what we need. We need to come get some tires and get back rolling here.'

'There was only one row on old tires, and Bubba (Wallace) gave us a heck of a shot. It was exactly what we needed to get going, get inside and be able to pull this win off.”

The win is Buescher's second of his career in the Xfinity Series; his last coming at Mid-Ohio last season. He said Sunday's race reminded him of the 'old Iowa” he knew and loved, though his results weren't spectacular before Sunday with a 13th last May and a 14th last August.

Buescher led four times for 94 laps throughout the race, and before that final caution came out had surrendered the lead to Elliott with 30 laps to go. Elliott had newer tires than him at the time, so he didn't have the forward grip off the corner to stay with the JR Motorsports driver.

The pair had swapped the lead all day and had been the dominant cars, with Elliott leading the most laps at 114. While riding in second, Buescher said he had to resort to 'points racing,” and protect his equipment and position. But there was no doubting the subsequent pit call when the final caution flew.

Points racing was out the window and a win was in the team's sights.

'We knew the position the 9 (Elliott) was in and had used up all their tires, and pretty much knew we had to take two,” said Buescher's crew chief, Scott Graves. 'I felt confident it was going to work for us and I knew we needed to keep the track position. It felt like that was the right thing to do and what we needed to do. It worked out perfect for us.”

There certainly was no argument from Buescher on the call, either. He may have been points racing before, but he also knew winning would be a pretty solid points day, too.

As a result, he left with an eight-point lead in the standings ahead of Ty Dillon, who finished 14th, and a 31-point lead ahead of Elliott.

'I was all for it,” Buescher said. 'At that point, it was maybe a bit of a gamble if anybody (extra) stayed out, but we were points racing up until that caution. It was time to forget about it (then).

'Why not? Take a shot. Our pit stops had been excellent all day; every time we came down pit road we came off first. It worked out.”

As excited as Buescher was, that's how frustrated Elliott was after the race. He knew his team was a sitting duck when everyone else pitted, but just hoped he could make some magic work on the restart.

Having what looked like a sure victory snatched away because of a late caution would be hard for anyone to take, but did his best to chalk it up to the adage of, 'that's racing.”

'I watched a lot of races growing up and been fortunate enough to go to a lot of races and have seen that happen a ton. It's just racing, man,” Elliott said. Unfortunately today, we were in a vulnerable position.

'We had kind of made our decision when we came down earlier. When you pit from the lead like that, there's a lot of variables. At least when you stay out, you know you're going to have the lead and control the restart and make the most of it. We were out of fresh tires, so we wouldn't have even put on good tires had we come down.”

POOLE PARKED AFTER PUNTING YELEY

Aside from the late race drama in the battle for the win, there was a touch of controversy in the beginning and middle of the race between drivers racing in the middle of the pack.

On lap 15, J.J. Yeley and Brennan Poole made contact on the back stretch, with Yeley hitting Poole's right rear, sending him head-on into the backstretch wall. Then, on lap 153, Poole retaliated.

Making just his seventh Xfinity Series start, Poole decided to send a message to the veteran Yeley and clipped his right rear and sent him into the Turn 3 wall. The wreck ended both driver's race - Yeley's with a destroyed racecar and Poole's by being black-flagged and parked by NASCAR.

'It's just unfortunate,” Poole said. 'He just deliberately crashed me (15) laps into the race. There were (235) laps left; there's no sense in that. It costs us a lot of money to be out here. ... I'm trying to build a brand, I'm trying to make my name in the sport so I can stay here and one of my heroes just deliberately crashes me. It just doesn't make sense.

'We fixed the car and got back to him. It's just part of racing. I hate it happened between me and J.J., but it's just how it goes sometimes.”

Yeley obviously had a different perspective on what happened.

He said the initial incident was accidental, and was a mixture of disappointed and angry that a young driver would make a decision to retaliate like Poole did.

'The first one, we were racing hard and I got loose off of (Turn) 2. Like four or five cars got by me and I was trying to cut my losses and tuck in behind Brennan as he was the last one by. I just clipped him as he went by and spun him; it wasn't intentional,” Yeley said. 'I'm not a rookie. I've been doing this long enough, I'm not going to crash you that far back. I hoped he would understand that and realize that.

'You could tell as soon as he came back out on the racetrack, he was dogging me all the way around the racetrack. You could see he was going to do something.”

Yeley said he would definitely speak with Poole about what happened because the young driver potentially has a long career ahead of him.

'I'm going to have to (talk to him) because obviously that's a stupid thing to do,” Yeley said. 'He's a young kid and has a sponsor and running for a big team, but I've been here long enough to know it's an expensive sport. We have a small team and this destroyed our car and destroyed his racecar. We've got five more back at the shop, he's got 20 more back at the shop.

'He's been doing a great job in this series. That's more of my disappointment, of understanding it was a racing incident versus something that's going to be more blatant.”

NASCAR said after the race there would be no further punishment or penalty for Poole for the incident.

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com