NASCAR Cup Series has already had three first-time winners this season.
- Ross Chastain’s victory in Texas gave the NASCAR Cup Series its third new winner this spring, quicker than at any time in recent history.
- Chastain’s win was hist first win in 48 career starts.
- Daniel Suarez, winless in 185 Cup starts, has two top-five finishes in seven starts this season.
Daniel Suarez is solidly among those “next first-timers” regularly showing up on the Cup Series grids these days. The 30-year-old native of Monterrey Mexico already has three top-10 finishes in six starts and dominated at Circuit Of The Americas last weekend until tire issues ruined his day.
Teammate Ross Chastain won, giving relatively young Trackhouse Racing its first victory in 48 starts. (“It will be our turn soon,” Suarez said afterward. “I hope the people at Trackhouse enjoy the victory.”) Earlier this year, first-timers Austin Cindric won for Team Penske at Daytona Beach and Chase Briscoe won for Stewart Haas Racing at Phoenix.
Daniel Suarez had two top-five finishes this season.
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The Chastain victory in Texas gave Cup its third new winner this spring, quicker than at any time in recent history.”
Blame it on the new Next Gen car or (as NASCAR understandably prefers) credit it to the new car. In either case, the cast of potential first-timers waiting on stage for the spotlight now includes Suarez, Tyler Reddick, and Daniel Hemric, with Ty Dillon and Harrison Burton lurking deeper in the wings.
Suarez arrived in NASCAR’s upper series as a 22-year-old rookie in 2014. He had starred in the largely overlooked Mexican Series, winning 10 races and being top-10 in points four times between 2009 and 2014. He advanced through the K&N East and West Series, then raced in the ARCA Series before reaching the Camping World Truck Series and Xfinity Series in 2014. He won one Camping World race and three in the Xfinity series, and was the 2016 Xfinity champion for Joe Gibbs Racing. That gave NASCAR some hope that Suarez might be the Hispanic driver they’ve been seeking to help expand its fan base south of Texas.
Problem was, he never stayed anywhere long enough to establish himself. He did two Cup seasons with Gibbs and was better in Season 2 than Season 1. He did even better in 2019, his lone season with Stewart-Haas Racing. He totally flamed out in 2020 with Gaunt Brothers racing before landing on his feet in 2021 with Trackhouse owners Justin Marks and Pitbull.
He’s on pace for his best Cup season in his five seasons. He ready has two top-5 finishes and three top-10s. Last year, in 36 starts with Trackhouse, he had only one top-5 and four top-10s. Not surprisingly—it was, after all, JGR—his best years in Cup were 2017-2018 with a pole, four top-5s, and 21 top-10s in 72 starts. Clearly, his Xfinity/Cup resume projects more success for the second-year Chevrolet team.
Last weekend at COTA might have been among the worst cuts of all. He qualified beside multi-time winner Ryan Blaney and took the point almost immediately. He led all 15 laps in Stage 1, and later called his No. 99 car “a rocket ship.” But contact cut down his left-rear tire early in Stage 2, costing him a lap getting back to the pits. He was coming back through the field in Stage 3 when power steering issues and a late-race flat tire in the final laps left him 24th at the checkered.
“So far, it’s been a really good start,” Suarez said several days after COTA, choosing to accentuate his three top-10s rather than his three poor runs. “Everybody has been working very hard at Trackhouse and Chevrolet. We have great equipment and great people, and great people are key. You have to have good people around you, and not just at the track, but at the shop as well building cars.
Suarez (99) raced with the leaders at Circuit of the Americas.
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“Every week, we have fast cars. Everybody in this series has started fresh with the Next Gen car, which has been good for us. We have an amazing package right now … but there’s always room for improvement. We just have to keep pushing. Knocking, grinding, and pushing.”
Sunday afternoon’s 400-lap, 300-miler at Richmond (Va.) Raceway will present Suarez a good opportunity to break through. He has three top-10s in nine RR starts, but has run better than his record shows with Gibbs, Gault, Stewart-Haas, and Trackhouse. One impressive stat: he’s completed all but six 0f the 3,606 laps (including six in OT) he’s run at the ¾-mile, D-shaped track.
When he does win, Suarez will become only the fifth foreign-born Cup driver to get to victory lane. Italian legend Mario Andretti won at Daytona Beach in 1967 for Holman-Moody; Canadian part-time driver Earl Ross won in 1974 for owner Junior Johnson at Martinsville; fan favorite Juan Pablo Montoya of Colombia did it for Chip Ganassi at Sonoma in 2007; and the ever-engaging Marcos Ambrose did it for owner Richard Petty at Watkins Glen in 2011.
Keyword: Daniel Suarez Is On Deck to Be NASCAR's Next First-Time Winner