How Chris Buescher Felt After Gut-Wrenching Loss To Kyle Larson

The AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway on Sunday brought thrills and excitement for fans, but served as a moment of agony for Chris Buescher.

The RFK Racing driver held the lead in the final stage after a weather delay and multiple restarts, including an overtime restart. But Kyle Larson surged from behind and beat Buescher by 0.001 seconds.

The photo finish was the smallest margin of victory in NASCAR history. It was the Hendrick Motorsports driver’s second win of the season and Buescher’s first career top-five on an intermediate speedway.

The way the 31-year-old lost was gut-wrenching.

“I thought I was going to throw up on the way to the airport afterward,” Buescher told Dale Earnhardt Jr. “If we’d gone across the line and from the get-go thought we finished second, you would have been upset about it, you would have been hurt by it, but it would’ve been OK. But that hour of time, really it was that first minute that everything was very confusing. Transponders, timing, scoring and everything are in our favor.

“Obviously, the painted line, which you know, doesn’t really matter. But it’s comical right now to talk about. But to see it all play out the way it did, it just hurts. You understand it now at least, but it’s not going to make it easier. This one’s going to hurt for a really, really long time. Some of our guys said, ‘Just don’t let it hurt any more than six days. Let’s just go to Darlington, win there and we can put it all behind us.'”

It also marked Buescher’s second two-top finish of the season, and the result boosted him to 11th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.