There aren’t many Cup Series drivers who can say they’ve beaten Shane van Gisbergen on a road course. Chris Buescher is one of them. The Prosper, Texas, native — who just scored his best career finish at Texas Motor Speedway of fifth last weekend — defeated SVG at Watkins Glen International two seasons ago in a finish for the ages. Van Gisbergen fired to the lead in overtime, but on the final lap, the Kiwi bobbled coming through the bus stop, allowing Buescher to use his bumper and surge for a win in the Finger Lakes. RELATED: Watkins Glen weekend schedule | Cup Series standings Since turning to the Next Gen chassis in 2022, Buescher has quietly been one of the best on the road. The Glen is his only triumph, but over the last 24 races turning left and right, the No. 17 RFK Racing driver has 17 top-10 finishes. That road course prowess dates back to his O’Reilly Series days and early years in Cup, when Buescher benefited from additional time in Ford’s simulator. While veteran drivers didn’t prioritize that type of preparation, Buescher became a sponge. “When the Ford simulator was pretty new and a lot of our veteran drivers weren‘t really keen on spending much time over there yet, there was a lot of open windows,” Buescher said in a Wednesday teleconference. “There were many eight-hour sessions spent over there, just across the street, getting to know a lot of race tracks that I hadn‘t been to before O‘Reilly or Cup racing at the time. And then trying to figure out how to be better at the types of race tracks that we don‘t get to see that often and that‘s road courses for us. “We‘ve spent our fair share of time over in the simulator