Daniel Suarez did not enjoy his Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway and it was the first thing he told his Trackhouse Racing team after the checkered flag.
“That wasn’t fun,” Suarez said.
Stats don’t lie — Suarez started 31st, was lapped for the first time on lap 63, finished the first and second stages in 30th and finished the race in 31st place, multiple laps down.
Amazingly, he advanced in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs by 11 points. He could even laugh about it afterward.
“I knew since [Friday] – I didn’t want to say it – when we unloaded for first practice, that we didn’t have the speed,” Suarez said. “We practiced bad, we qualified bad, and we raced the same way. We were able to make the car a little bit better; we were just not fast enough. Luckily, things worked out right there and we were able to build a good cushion in Atlanta and Watkins Glen, but it was not ideal.”
Fortunately, Suarez had a 36-point advantage on the cutline going into the postseason’s first elimination race. The cushion came through a second-place finish at Atlanta and a 13th-place finish at Watkins Glen, plus 14 stage points earned.
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Suarez, who admitted early in the weekend that he loves the half-mile Bristol facility, has struggled on its concrete. The last time he finished in the top 10 at Bristol was in 2019. His best finish while driving for Trackhouse Racing has been an 18th-place result earlier this year.
“I can only control so much,” Suarez said. “I have to control what I can control, and the only thing I could control was the steering wheel of the No. 99. I knew I was racing with [Ty Gibbs]; I raced him very, very hard and everyone else I raced pretty easy. I was only concerned with what I could control.”
It wasn’t a fun way to race, he admitted, but it was necessary. Despite being laps down to the leader, Suarez had to be kept abreast of not only where Gibbs was running, but also who, of the cars on the same lap, he needed to pass for the points at stake. Every time the leader came back around to put Suarez another lap down, he did his best to put up a fight until no longer capable.
“Once I started holding off [Gibbs] and everyone started catching us, and then people started passing him and I was letting them go, I knew I was going to be in a good spot,” he said.
Suarez goes into the Round of 12 sitting 10th on the playoff grid, six points below a transfer spot.