Daniel Suarez is already bound for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs via his thrilling and history-making photo-finish victory, edging out Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch at Atlanta.
The Trackhouse Racing driver isn’t satisfied with that. He wants to win again and his next best chance to do it is at this weekend’s race at Circuit of the Americas, where he’s run well in the past but his finishes haven’t reflected it, falling victim on multiple occasions to over-aggressive driving, including that of his own teammate Ross Chastain just a year ago.
During a conversation with the pilot of the No. 99 car, I asked him about that incident, and in particular the restart zone being moved to a different location for this year’s race. He offered an interesting answer.
@Daniel_SuarezG talks about how his bad behavior in 2023 is responsible for a rule change at @NASCARatCOTA in 2024. pic.twitter.com/Vk4mpd7YmL
— Kyle Dalton (@kdsportswriter) March 21, 2024
“First of all, you’re welcome because thanks to me, that happened,” Suarez laughed. “It costs me $50K (he was fined in 2023 after running into his teammate’s car entering pit road on the cool-down lap) but you’re welcome, everyone. I think that the main thing there is that, in the past, somebody that was running 15 to 20th wanted to get off corner number one, being in the top 10 and that’s impossible, right? You cannot do that without contact.
“And unfortunately, this car it’s very tough and it can take a lot of contact. So drivers take advantage of that, especially drivers that know that they don’t have a chance of winning the race. Most of the drivers that were making these bold moves, you know, dumb moves and really moves that you wouldn’t make if you were running in the top five, they were coming from the back. And moving this restart zone to where it is now, it’s going to make really the top 10, the top 10 guys are going to be in exactly the same situation, bumper to bumper.
“The difference is going to be the rows five, six, seven, eight, and everything behind, because everything’s going to be more spread out in the corner, really. So it’s going to be different. It’s going to be a little bit of an adaptation process. But I think that, in general, it’s a little bit more fair. For the guys that are running top five, top 10 to not have the guys that are in top 15, just trying to hit everyone and move five cars out of the way.”
Daniel Suarez Says F1 Is Boring
Daniel Suarez is connected to F1 more than most. He’s engaged to Julia Piquet, the daughter of the three-time world champion, Nelson. He spent last Christmas with the Piquet family, including Kelly’s boyfriend Max Verstappen. So he’s personally talked to the one who has dominated the sport for the last three years.
Merry Christmas from Brazil, amigos! 🇧🇷 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/dN2wN13Bmp
— Daniel Suárez (@Daniel_SuarezG) December 25, 2023
I asked about his connection to F1, and more specifically, how he views NASCAR compared to the other series as far as competition is concerned, considering the first five races of the 2024 Cup Series season have been won by five different drivers and a combined margin of victory of 6.998 seconds while Verstappen has won the first two races in F1 by 22 and 13 seconds, respectively. The 32-year-old driver didn’t mince words.
“I’m a little bit biased, obviously, because I’m in NASCAR, right?” Suarez admitted. “And that’s pretty much very hard to avoid to be a little biased. Also Max is a little bit biased because he’s the one that is winning all these races, right? But if he wasn’t, I think that the perspective would be, man, the races are boring. The cars are so far apart or the competition is so far apart, before the race we already know who is going to finish on the podium pretty much.
“So things like that, in my opinion, NASCAR has done a great job making this generic car, and giving very similar tools to most teams to go out there and compete in my opinion. Formula One really needs to do something similar because I think it’s amazing to have two friends, me personally, Checo and Max that are winning everything right now, because I know these two guys very, very well, but the races are pretty boring.”
Sounds like they’ll have something to discuss in their next family gathering.