Daniel Suarez delivers in the clutch at Atlanta when he needed to the most
With 2024 being a contract year, Daniel Suarez needed to leave a big impression to maintain his ride with Trackhouse Racing for 2025 and beyond. Two races into the season, the 32-year-old is doing just that.
Now the big question is: Can he keep this up?
On Sunday, a week after a 34th-place finish in the Daytona 500, Suarez won the Ambetter Health 400 in a thrilling finish.
It's not the first time Suarez has performed well under pressure with a team that's a perennial contender, but it is the first time he's been in a position to deliver.
In 2017, after winning the Xfinity Series championship, he was called up to drive the No. 19 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing, shortly after the shocking retirement of Carl Edwards.
At the conclusion of the 2018 season, after a two-year stint that bore little fruit, he was let go from JGR and picked up by Stewart-Haas Racing for 2019.
In 2019, called up to replace a generational talent in Kurt Busch, Suarez missed the playoffs for the third consecutive year and was relegated to the lowly Gaunt Brothers team in 2020. That season, he missed the Daytona 500 and earned zero top-10 finishes. His best finish in 2020 was 18th.
Now in his fourth year with Trackhouse Racing, a team which was built around him by co-owner Justin Marks, Suarez is hitting his stride, but not all is well for the Mexican-born driver.
Though he got his first career win at Sonoma in 2022, he missed the playoffs again in 2023 while his teammate, Ross Chastain, made the postseason and won two races. Going into the year, he'd have to show to his team and the industry as a whole that he doesn't just belong in the Cup Series, but that he's a contender to win week in and week out.
On Sunday night, as Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch and Suarez himself barreled to the line in one of NASCAR's greatest finishes, three one-thousandths of a second — no, that's not a typo — have given Suarez new life not just for this season, but for 2025 and beyond as he seeks an extension with Trackhouse Racing. Those few inches put Suarez into the NASCAR playoffs and proves that his Sonoma win was no fluke.
"We wrecked on Lap 2," Suarez said following Sunday's win. "The guys did an amazing job fixing this car. I can't thank everyone enough."
2024 is not the first time Suarez has been under immense pressure while with a big-name team, but it is the first time he has delivered while under said pressure.
If he can deliver more consistent results, Sunday's win in Atlanta may not just be a placeholder until contract negotiations start, but the beginning of a special run for the No. 99 team.
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