Buescher bearing down at Talladega

In NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season with so much parity, James Buescher has been the exception. He’s one of 12 drivers to have tasted victory in 17 races thus far, but no one has come close to Buescher’s series-best four wins.

Buescher will aim to keep his breakthrough NASCAR season rolling in Saturday’s fred’s 250 (4 p.m. ET, SPEED) at Talladega Superspeedway, a true wild-card track with just five races left on the 2012 slate.

Despite his win tally, Buescher ranks a close second in the truck tour’s standings, just one point behind ultra-consistent rookie Ty Dillon. Championship or not, it’s been a solid ride for the 22-year-old Texan, who had zero wins in his NASCAR career before this season.

Buescher’s also shown he knows a thing or two about superspeedway racing, winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series opener in February at Daytona International Speedway after navigating past a thundering last-lap crash at the front of the pack. Any prior conditioning for chaos should serve him well at Talladega, where three-wide racing is almost commonplace.

“I really enjoy racing on superspeedways for the pure fast speeds and action-packed racing,” Buescher said. “I am also on edge because anything at any time can happen on them. This is a place that we can win and I hope we are in place to accomplish that.”

Dillon has led the truck series points for the last three weeks, but hasn’t been able to breathe easily — his largest advantage in that span has been just eight points. Though third-place Timothy Peters has slipped back to 24 points off the top, just 41 points separate the top six.

“It’s hard to stay focused with so many different teams that are able to win every week in the truck series,” Dillon said. “That’s just applause to NASCAR for making the series so great and so close, and it’s really fun to be racing in it, but the only thing that we can do is focus on us and winning races in the future. I think that’s what we’re doing and I think that’s why we have such good momentum.”