NASCAR.com's Alex Weaver goes 1-on-1 with Watkins Glen winner, Chris Buscher as he details his battle with Shane van Gisbergen.
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00:00Here in victory lane at Watkins Glen with the race winner Chris Buescher. We saw you
00:04climb out of the race car after getting the win and you were a bit emotional. Why?
00:08Oh, it's just it's been a year. It's been a roller coaster ride right to come so close
00:14several times and to really have a very competitive year and not be able to put
00:20this thing in victory lane yet. To have our record that we have on road courses and and
00:26not be able to seal the deal yet. It all just built up to this moment to finally
00:32come into a race. I know we were really good after yesterday and qualified terrible and
00:38passed that many cars with great strategy and in a car that just came alive after five laps.
00:44It was really a lot of fun for myself as a driver to manage tires. A tire that had a ton of fall
00:50off and really changed the outcome of the race. It's fun for me to work through that and to earn
00:55this thing. It's been a long time coming so to finally get that first cup series road course
01:00win. That's with the record we've had and how many top tens we've had these things finally,
01:05finally able to seal the deal. Well you mentioned building up to something and build up to a last
01:08lap pass around Shane Van Gisbergen. Walk me through that move you made. Yeah, to go from
01:16several seconds up on the field with a handful of laps to go to three restarts in a row. That'll
01:23drive your excitement levels right through the roof. So I had two really good restarts,
01:28were able to clear them and get away and that last one everybody just drove into one a little
01:33harder yet and lost the lead and knew it was going to be hard to get by Shane and
01:38obviously such a good road racer and went down into the bust of that last lap. I knew we caught
01:43him a little bit when we took the white up the S's and I went to a point where I could not go
01:49in the corner any deeper and I think he was still on the gas. So I had a good feeling something was
01:54getting ready to happen and sure enough I'm sure he bottomed out. Still rough back there, it's not
02:00just glass, you know, it's got some character but just to have that big slide from him and
02:08trying to work that crossover he did a good job of slamming the door and tried to go back the
02:13other way and it was tight but good hard race in there and it was a lot of fun. I know you've
02:21talked about playing spoiler to this playoff field now that you didn't make the 16. So do you relish
02:25playing spoiler to 16 playoff drivers here today? Yeah, yeah I do. Certainly going to take that and
02:31enjoy it but most importantly going to enjoy the fact that we're able to win in the cup series
02:37again. It's been over a year and we've been so close but it's what come the racetrack to do and
02:44throughout the season we'll talk about points and they'll lie where they will but
02:49surely we would have loved to have done this three, four weeks ago and be solidly in the
02:54playoffs but this is huge for our team. Really shows what we've been capable of all season and
03:00there's a lot of racing left so I'm excited to keep going. Congratulations, Chris. Thank you.