It’s possible that no sport in the world carries with it org charts as complicated as the NASCAR Cup Series.
While the lines between coach, captain, and teammate are abundantly clear in the NFL and NBA, in NASCAR you can race against your boss, who is sometimes your teammate, but also sometimes not your teammate. Bubba Wallace drives for 23XI Racing, owned in part by Denny Hamlin, who in turn drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, and is teammates with his boss’s grandson, Ty Gibbs.
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It can all be very confusing, and not just for fans new to the sport, but also for the drivers who are involved in the complex dynamics. If you are racing against your boss, you have to race to win — that’s what the boss pays you for. But at the same time, anyone who’s ever worked a job knows that showing up your boss usually does not go over well.
Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece fall into this category of driver, as they are teammates at RFK Racing with Brad Keselowski, whose last name represents the K in RFK. Speaking with the Racin’ With the Boys podcast, Buescher explained that it can indeed get a little weird going up against the guy that pays you.
“It’s certainly tricky at times,” Buescher said. “Brad’s a hard racer. He’s a champion of our sport. He knows how to win races. And he’s had his fair share of run-ins through the years as well. When need be, he’s going to get after it.”
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Buescher knows that Keselowski has his back and is going to support him on the track in most cases — except when the two of them are facing off head to head.
“It’s a little easier in some ways, in that he has invested ownership in all three of our race cars, so you know you’re not going to get wronged in any kind of intentional way, because he wants all of us to succeed. But we are competitors at the end of the day. It’s a little bit harder from my point to race Brad at times, because his name is on my shirt and my fire suit and my car and my paycheck, and not the other way around. You have to have that fire and that drive to figure out how to race everybody, but there’s a little added level of respect when it comes to, generally teammates, but also knowing that Brad is our boss at the end of the day.”
Preece agreed, and added that as with any teammate on the track, there are times when you work together and other times you simply have to race to win.
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“There’s situations where you aren’t going to hurt each other on the track,” Preece said. “If Brad is side by side with somebody and we have a run coming where you can take them three wide and kind of clear them both, there’s definitely times where you get behind your teammate and push him by instead of putting each other in a bad spot.”
With two races left in the regular season, the three RFK Racing drivers are going to have to leave it all on the track. Buescher is in 10th in the standings and all but assuredly locked into the postseason, but Preece and Keselowski sit in 17th and 19th respectively, just below the cut line of 16 drivers.
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If Preece and Keselowski are both racing for one spot that’s up for grabs in the Chase, expect both drivers to go all out, regardless of the boss-employee dynamics at play.
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