When it was announced one year ago this week that Trackhouse Racing was parting ways with Daniel Suárez, it seemed like the Mexico native could be left out of the NASCAR Cup Series’ game of musical chairs.
So as reporters gathered around to ask Suárez about his future, one of the questions was whether he’d consider dropping to the lower-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series to rebuild his career.
Suárez wasn’t interested, expressing confidence he could stay in the Cup Series and vowing he could succeed. As it turns out, he was right.
After a move to Spire Motorsports, Suárez has been the biggest surprise of the NASCAR season as it reaches its halfway point on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. Last year, the 34-year-old finished 29th in the Cup Series standings; so far this year, he is eighth and headed toward what once seemed like an improbable-at-best berth in NASCAR’s Chase for the Championship.
“Dude, if they pull this s— off, it’s like the last-place team that wins the division,” Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson said.
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Meanwhile, his average finish has jumped an astounding seven positions (from 20.9 to 13.6, on pace for a career best) — doing so in a car that finished 31st in the point standings last year.
But Suárez insists he hasn’t been caught off guard by any of it.
“To be honest, I already knew it, man,” he said in a recent interview. “Back in January, I’m like, ‘I want to show these motherf—ers I’m good.’ And now I’m just smiling because I already knew what was going to happen.
“I have never doubted myself. I work very hard, I train, I do all these kind of things to be able to do this job to the best of my abilities. The only difference is that now you guys have seen it.”
But few others would have predicted Suárez’s revitalized career, and for what seemed like perfectly viable reasons.
First of all, Suárez’s performance at Trackhouse had lagged to the point where team owner Justin Marks’ once-difficult decision — which driver to jettison in favor of promising young rookie Connor Zilisch — was pretty clear by last summer.
Anchor driver Ross Chastain was inside the top 10 in the point standings while Suárez was trying to stay ahead of then-rookie Shane van Gisbergen. Except van Gisbergen was unstoppable on road courses, winning five of them last season and putting himself into NASCAR’s playoffs.
Suárez publicly claimed Trackhouse was headed in the wrong direction, but Chastain’s speed at the time sparked skepticism about the veracity of Suárez’s comments.
Daniel Suárez has increased his average finish from 20.9 last season to 13.6 in 2026, on pace for a career best. (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
Second, Suárez did not appear to upgrade his ride with his new team. Driver Justin Haley’s average finish was a disappointing 22.2 in the No. 7 car last season; on paper, a struggling driver headed to an underperforming car didn’t exactly draw predictions of glory.
But sometimes it all just clicks, and Ryan Sparks — who crew-chiefed the No. 7 car for the final 27 races of the season before being paired with Suárez this year — put it this way: “We needed Daniel, and Daniel needed us.
“Maybe our career paths left a little chip on our shoulder, and a lot of people within the walls of Spire race with that chip. So it’s just been a good easy mesh all year, right from the get-go.”
That get-go started in the organization’s first competition meeting. There was a direct and tense conversation about how Spire teammates Michael McDowell and Carson Hocevar had let the end of the Daytona 500 slip away, and Suárez stepped in to articulate everything in a manner that both of the other drivers agreed with.
Dickerson, who was in the meeting, was impressed by how the veteran set the tone and has since become a “glue guy” for his teammates both on and off the track.
“It would be perfectly understandable if a guy like that showed up and was just like, ‘F— everybody. This is my last chance,’” Dickerson said. “Instead, he’s been like a great teammate, and he’s been able to balance the desperation that he needed to have, being in the situation he was in, with also making 175 people (who work at Spire) feel like he was in it with them.”
The reaction to Suárez’s season so far — a crown jewel win at the Coca-Cola 600, being ahead of big-name drivers in the standings — has amused the now-veteran, who has insisted all along he wasn’t the problem.
McDowell, who understands how a good or bad car can make drivers look, recently posed some rhetorical questions to Suárez.
“Daniel, are you a different driver than last year?” McDowell asked. “Are you trying harder? Are you working harder? Are you training harder?”
McDowell knew the answer: No. But Suárez said the perception is he must be doing something differently to get these results, when the truth is less compelling.
“The reality is you just have the right amount of people and the right people in the right place to be able to go out there and do the job,” he said.
With Ross Chastain (right) and Shane van Gisbergen outperforming him, Daniel Suárez (left) was the odd man out when Trackhouse was ready to free up a seat for Connor Zilisch. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Last summer, it would have seemed unlikely for Suárez to find himself in this situation at all. Spire had made a run at Kyle Busch, but Busch ultimately decided to stay at Richard Childress Racing for another season. That left Spire in a position where it needed to find a short-term replacement in the car, perhaps just until Busch or another big name was free for 2027.
Suárez was a late signing, and the expectations for this year were modest: Perhaps Suárez could prove he was better than he showed at Trackhouse while Spire could show its No. 7 car wasn’t as bad as it performed with Haley — both before they moved on to greener pastures in 2027.
“It’s like the last boy and the last girl and the school dance, and it’s kind of like, ‘Well, f— it, I guess we’ll dance together,’” Dickerson said. “Except now she’s moving in.”
Suárez had noticed last season how the young Hocevar seemed to inexplicably run with the major teams while Spire was still very much in a building phase as one of the Cup Series’ newest organizations, which made him say to himself: “Man, these guys have strong cars, but they haven’t been able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Perhaps Suárez could become an important piece of the puzzle on the No. 7 team, he figured. In the simplest terms, that’s what appears to have happened.
But Spire didn’t fully grasp who it was signing when the team brought Suárez on board, Dickerson said.
“We didn’t factor in his work ethic,” Dickerson said. “We didn’t factor in how he just fights. He’s just relentless. We didn’t know that about him.”
The other part of the equation was Sparks, who wasn’t supposed to be Suárez’s crew chief. He had been the team’s competition director but was moved into a crew chief role after Spire parted ways with Rodney Childers on the No. 7 car after only a few months on the job last year; Sparks then was back atop the pit box to finish out Haley’s tenure with the team.
After the signing last fall, Spire searched for a crew chief for Suárez. Several turned down the job, and Sparks, who Dickerson noted “took a lot of bullets for years” while unable to win a Cup race, ended up stepping in for another year.
Then in May, Sparks’ pit call led Suárez to a victory in the Coca-Cola 600, and the team finds itself much higher in points than anticipated.
“To make this big of a jump that quick has been nice, and probably a little more than we expected coming into it,” Sparks said. “But I’m not really surprised, though. With the speed the 77 showed last year, I knew if we had a pilot capable of doing it, we could get there.”
The question now is: Where is the team going? It’s premature to think Suárez and the No. 7 are title contenders (“I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t know we’re a championship team quite yet,” Sparks said). But the goal is to get as high in points as possible before the Chase begins, which would give them a chance to make a run if they continued to put those puzzle pieces together.
Suárez looks around the garage at drivers like Josh Berry, who recently lost his ride with Wood Brothers Racing, and feels empathy for those who are talented but aren’t getting the results. His situation shows what’s possible with the right combination, he said.
“In the Cup Series, it’s not enough just to be a good race car driver with a fast race car,” Suárez said. “You have to be sometimes a good psychologist, sometimes a good team leader and sometimes a lot more things. And sometimes, that just comes with time.”