Coming off of a winless 2023 campaign that saw Daniel Suárez miss out on the Playoffs, the series’ lone Mexican racer entered last season with a lot to prove.
Rumors swirled in the offseason that Daniel was in the hot seat at Trackhouse Racing, the team he helped bring to life prior to the 2021 season. After three years, one victory, and a top-10 points finish, Suárez needed to re-establish himself as a driver that could still get the job done.
The series’ season-opening exhibition race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum left the #99 team with a sour taste in their mouth as the truncated LA Clash eliminated the heat races, meaning everything came down to laying down a fast qualifying lap.
The flagship Trackhouse team failed to make the big show, but Suárez had an ace up his sleeve to make the weekend worthwhile: he entered the support race for the Clash that was held for the NASCAR Mexico Series.
In the King Taco La Batalla En El Coliseo, Suárez rolled off the grid in sixth and quickly rose into the top-5. Before the 50-lap mark, Suárez was knocking on the door of the top-3, and a caution on lap 62 may have been what won him the race.
Suárez elected to take the outside of the front row for the ensuing restart. When the green flag flew, Daniel withstood a challenge from five-time Mexico Series champion Ruben Garcia Jr. on the first lap under green before Garcia moved him a few laps later to take second back.
A slew of lapped cars bunched the top-3 up around lap 100, giving Suárez an opportunity to capitalize. Daniel swung around Abraham Calderon first on lap 99 to take second before handing the spot back before a commercial break that saw the Cup Series regular sneak back by Calderon.
Not forgetting how Garcia raced him earlier, Suárez used the next restart to exact revenge on his rival, moving Garcia’s #88 on the entry to turn 3 to rip the lead away. The contact punctured one of Garcia’s tires and took him out of contention.
Daniel weathered the storm over the final two restarts to claim his first Mexico Series victory since he was a series regular in 2014 when he took the checkered flag at Óvalo Aguascalientes México.
With a 19th-place qualifying effort on the board for the Daytona 500, the eighth-year veteran improved his grid slot for the big race with a sixth-place run in the first Duel.
Suárez stayed in the lead draft for much of the first stage and landed a point at the end before following Ryan Blaney to the line for stage 2 to snag third.
With the lap count falling fast, the flagship Trackhouse driver kept himself up front for nearly the entire race, and with nine laps to go, he gave Alex Bowman a big push down the backstretch.
Bowman took that massive run and gave it to the lead of the middle line, William Byron. Unable to maintain control of his car, Byron’s #24 Chevy clipped Brad Keselowski’s #6 Ford, sending the Mustang back into the pack where Suárez was swept into the melee by another Ford driven by Todd Gilliland.
A 31st at Daytona after a strong Speedweeks was not the start to the year the #99 crew had in mind, so they took the Freeway Insurance Chevy to Atlanta to continue their pursuit of victory.
Qualifying didn’t provide much insight into the car’s speed, but being caught up in a lap 2 pileup certainly continued the damaging trend from Daytona. Luckily for Trackhouse, Suárez just needed some BearBond and was sent back out on the track.
Stage 1 bore no fruit, but the Freeway Camaro started to pick its way through the field, climbing up to the top-10 with two laps left in the second stage. As the white flag waved, Suárez dove to the bottom in turns 1 & 2, narrowly avoiding a crash that developed in the top lane.
Shortly into the final stage, trouble took a swipe at Suárez again as Kyle Busch dove to the low side of Kaz Grala in turn 1, shooting Grala up the track and nearly into the side of the #99.
The Monterrey native rolled to the front in the final 20 laps, missing a number of incidents by virtue of running toward the front. Chief among them was trouble’s final swipe at Daniel when he split Denny Hamlin three-wide going into turn 3.
Chase Briscoe tried to fill a narrow gap between Hamlin and Busch on the outside, triggering an accident that took out the #14 and the #11 while Busch and Suárez escaped unscathed.
Daniel lost control of the race on the final restart, ceding the lead to Ryan Blaney. The defending series champion took the white flag with the #99 and the #8 behind him. Busch took a massive push from Bubba Wallace to spring for the middle, leaving Daniel to take on the two Cup champions in the final turns.
Blaney on the bottom, Busch in the middle, and Suárez on the top, the three converged on the finish line without making contact. Between the three of them, the final margin of victory between first and third was just .007 (seven one-thousandths-of-a-second.)
The finishing order after final review: Suárez by .003 over Blaney and .007 over Busch.
After the results were made official, Suárez sat elated in his car on the frontstretch, receiving congratulations from teammate Ross Chastain. His pit crew brought out the celebratory taco pinata for their driver to punch, leaving the cardboard carcass on the hood of his car while he took his second career trip to victory lane.
The series’ lone Mexican driver locked himself into the postseason with a thrilling victory and backed it up with solid performances at Vegas, Phoenix, and Bristol. This streak came to an end with horrendous showing at COTA where he slinked home in 31st.
Back-to-back 22nd-place efforts at Richmond and Martinsville failed to spark much optimism until the cold streak was done away with after a return to the top-5 in Texas due to pit strategy and mayhem throughout the field.
An 18th-place effort at Dover stood alone in a six-race stretch where Suárez couldn’t rally for a top-20 finish, but a 14th in Sonoma followed by a top-10 at Iowa gave the team some life at the dawn of summer.
Daniel bounced back from an early mishap with Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace at Chicago to place 11th prior to netting finishes of 16th and 8th at Pocono and Indianapolis.
During the Olympic break after Indianapolis, Suárez got married to longtime partner Julia Piquet in Brazil where he would later compete in a NASCAR Brasil Series race at the world-renowned Interlagos.
The new groom deftly weaved his way to victory in the first of a trio of races, but the officials stripped the win away due to Suárez initiating too much contact on the final lap. So, he came right back in the second of the three races and took his third victory of the season in his third different division of NASCAR racing.
The first race after the break at Richmond showed that new crew chief Matt Swiderski would be open to taking risks as the #99 team was one of the first to saddle their car with the option tire at the beginning of stage 2. The move allowed Daniel to advance through the field rapidly, taking the lead for the first time on lap 93.
The gamble paid off as Suárez built enough of a gap to hold on for the stage 2 victory, and after a solid final stage where they put on their last set of option tires, the Choice Privileges Camaro raced all the way up to third before the final caution came out. Since the rest of the field still held onto a set of option tires, Suárez got shuffled back to 10th when he crossed the line. Daniel kept up the momentum with an eighth at Michigan.
In the penultimate regular season race, the #99 was the victim of an incredible gaffe as they had fuel in their pit stall ignite and actively burn the car, forcing Suárez out of the car and out of the race. Not much of note happened the following week in Darlington as Daniel cruised home to an 18th-place finish.
Opening up the Playoffs at the site of his last win, Daniel seemed ready to fly through the field from his 30th-place qualifying spot to contend; by the end of stage 2, he made his way to fourth to collect pivotal points.
Entering the final stage, the Quaker State Camaro retained its spot at the front of the field, keeping challengers at bay behind the emerald green oil machine. As the laps clicked off, Suárez knew he needed to make his move, so with 11 laps to go, he carried a big run down the backstretch to snatch the lead from Ty Gibbs.
One problem: a caution flew for a sponsor board falling on the race track.
With teammate Ross Chastain in tow, Suárez looked to have a great chance to hold on for a season sweep. As the field approached the white flag, another caution flag flew in its place, meaning an attempt at NASCAR Overtime.
In the Overtime period, Suárez held his own until his teammate got shuffled out of the groove on the frontstretch, leaving Daniel to fend for himself. He would ultimately fall short of victory to Joey Logano, a driver that had the benefit of still having Ryan Blaney behind to push him to victory.
Although he managed to score major points in stage 1 at Watkins Glen, Suárez pushed too hard near the end of the second stage, sliding into the sand pit outside of turn 6. The spin put him down to 35th, one lap down.
After receiving the free pass, the Mexican driver navigated his Freeway Chevy through the mess to notch a 14th-place finish, putting him above the cutline for the cutoff race at Bristol.
Suárez endured a torturous evening in Tennessee, only mustering a 31st-place effort. Thanks to his 35-point advantage over the cutline, his nightmare would be short-lived as he would still advance to the next round.
The former Xfinity Series champion’s Cinderella bid for the title would be short-lived as a 13th-place result in Kansas did little to keep him in the hunt after multiple pre-race penalties and a matching error from Suárez at Talladega saw him in the wall on lap 12.
A bad day at Dega was equaled by a horrendous run at the Roval where a skirmish with Bubba Wallace ended with Suárez having to serve a penalty in the backstretch chicane, relegating him to a 31st-place run and eliminating him from title contention.
Two forgettable runs at Homestead and Martinsville were sandwiched by a great gamble on fuel in Vegas that led to Daniel taking the low step on the podium. To conclude the season at Phoenix, the Mexican racer brought home the Freeway Chevy in 10th after starting the day in 34th.
What Went Wrong
In the third year of the Chevrolet Camaro being the base for the GM NextGen car, the other manufacturers were able to make gains in the offseason prior to 2024 by introducing more optimized models.
Because of this, every Chevy team that wasn’t Hendrick Motorsports struggled. Suárez’s teammate, Ross Chastain, failed to join the #99 in the Playoffs. RCR — the team Trackhouse has a technical alliance with — missed the Playoffs entirely as well as Kaulig, JTG Daugherty, and Spire.
Of the six Chevrolet race teams comprising 14 cars, just five of them earned a victory in the regular season that sent them to the postseason; Daniel Suárez was the only one not from Hendrick Motorsports.
Suárez also entered 2024 with a new crew chief in Matt Swiderski, and while it was great to get a win early in the season, their qualifying runs resulted in just four trips to the second round, averaging a 20.7 start.
Of all Playoff drivers, Daniel ranked second-lowest in stage points, only collecting them in 10 races across the entire schedule and doubling up in just one race the entire season: the Daytona 500.
The Atlanta victory was great for a team that was clearly in a rebuilding year. Strong performances in the first two races of the Round of 16 kept them in the hunt, but the pre-race penalties at Talladega ruined any distant chance they had at winning the title.
Looking Ahead to 2025
Daniel Suarez’s 2025 season will be another where the 33-year-old series veteran will need to prove his worth as a Cup Series driver.
A top-10 points finish in 2022 gave glimmers of hope to a driver that had a dominant 2016 Xfinity Series season on the way to a championship before being rushed up to Cup by Joe Gibbs Racing and hastily discarded two years later.
Picking up rides at Stewart-Haas Racing and Gaunt Bros Racing kept his head above water until Suárez landed at Trackhouse prior to the 2021 campaign where a surprise run at Bristol Dirt gave him a full head of steam going into the 2022 season where he logged his first victory at Sonoma.
A 2023 where he went winless and missed the Playoffs put pressure on the series’ lone Mexican driver heading into a contract year, and he delivered his second victory to the team in dazzling fashion.
Getting bounced in the Round of 12 and notching top-10s in just a quarter of the season’s races doesn’t inspire confidence in the #99 team in yet another contract year. The departure of team owner Pitbull leaves Suárez vulnerable to free agency as Connor Zilisch rises through the ranks at a torrid pace.
If the addition of Shane van Gisbergen can give this team a spark in the fourth year of the Camaro, Suárez and Trackhouse could be in store for a return to form in 2025. It could also further the issues the team has had, and it could lead to Daniel being on the move from the team he helped bring to the Cup Series four short years ago.
Races Daniel Could Win: Atlanta summer, Mexico City, Texas
(Top Photo Credit: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
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