MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series rookie Daniel Suarez said the sudden departure this week of his crew chief, Dave Rogers, came “as a surprise” but he fully supports his decision to take an indefinite personal leave of absence.
“I respect Dave’s decision to do this and take care of his personal stuff with the Cup schedule as busy as it is, it’s sometimes difficult to do both at the same time,” Suarez said Friday afternoon at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.
“I have a lot of respect for Dave. He’s a great guy and a great crew chief. I know how badly he wants to be at the race track. It’s what he’s been working hard on his entire life. The only thing I can do is wish him the best and hope he returns soon.”
On Wednesday night, Joe Gibbs Racing released a press release stating Rogers would be taking an indefinite personal leave of absence. No reason was given for his decision. With the abrupt departure, JGR announced that Scott Graves who won the NASCAR XFINITY Series championship with Suarez last season would take over Rogers’ duties as crew chief for the Monterrey, Mexico driver in the No. 19 Toyota in the Cup Series.
Suarez admitted he was unsure when Rogers will return.
“The truth is I don’t really know” when Rogers will return,” Suarez said. “I wish I did but I don’t really know myself. What I can say is that Dave is an amazing person outside the race track.
“Even before I started racing with him at Daytona, I went to his house, with the entire team we had dinner. He’s a great, great person. We’ve become friends. We’ve been together just five racers but already we are very tight friends.”
The shocking news comes on the momentum of two top-10 finishes for Suarez after a slow start to his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season entering Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville.
“It was a hard week for the entire organization,” said Suarez. “It’s a family and everyone supports each other very well. He’s still part of the team even when he is not with us here right now. He’s still in communication with all of us.
“With Scott, he’s a great crew chief. We’ve won a championship together. We had been working just one year (together) but we know each other very well.”
Despite their phenomenal success together in the XFINITY Series in 2015 and 2016, Suarez wasn’t sure if the crew chief after five races would stall his momentum.
“I don’t really know,” he said. “I feel like for sure I was getting to a point with Dave that slowly we were making that chemistry, communication, making those click.
“It’s never good when you are in that spot of knowing each other and then we have to split but the good thing is that I know Scott very well. I was still planning to race with him 14-15 times this year in Xfinity. He knows what I need to be fast.”
While the No. 19 Cup team is seeing their second big shake up of the year, Suarez’s JGR teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin said Rogers’ absence is a tough situation for the organization.
“They’ve already had a few wrenches thrown their way before the season even started,” Hamlin said of the No. 19 team. “But Daniel is with a guy who (Scott) has had a lot of success with, and when we talked about having a guy come up, I thought it was a pretty easy answer to have Scott come up.
“It would take a crew chief a long time just to kind of understand Daniel inside the car, so I think someone having that experience with him was a must.”
Busch said JGR would “lose something” by not having Rogers engage at the track.
“I think anytime you lose good crew chiefs, you lose a little bit of strength to your company,” the 2015 Cup Series champion said. “I think whenever you lose good drivers, like Carl Edwards, you lose a little bit of strength to your company,” Busch said.
“We’ve taken two big bullets here for this season, one from Carl, one from Dave. We’ve got to recover some of that and get back into the game where we’re the strongest four-car team out there like we felt like we were the last couple of years with all of us in place.”
And if losing Rogers wasn’t enough this week, Suarez crashed in the lone Cup Series practice at Martinsville Friday morning, reverting to a backup car for Sunday’s race.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
