BRISTOL, Tenn.: Daniel Suárez squeaked into the Round of 12 of the 2024 NASCAR Playoffs for the second time in his Cup career.
Despite finishing 31st, four laps off of the pace in Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race, Suarez accumulated enough points to advance, thanks to a second-place result at Atlanta and 13th at Watkins Glen in the first two races of the Round of 16.
Entering the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway next weekend, the driver of the No. 99 Trackhouse Chevrolet finds himself 11th in the standings with 2085 points—the same number as Chase Briscoe.
“It was a struggle,” said Suarez, following his worst career-finish at Bristol. “Since yesterday when we unloaded the car for first practice, we just didn’t have the speed. As you know, with a short amount of practice, qualifying, and going to the race, if you don’t have speed out of the trailer, it’s very, very difficult to bring it back to speed.”
The No. 99 Trackhouse crew did themselves no favors. Suarez qualified 35th and was lapped by race winner Kyle Larson 64 circuits into the elimination race. He was running 31st at that time. With Larson’s level of speed, once he put Suarez down a lap, the deficit just continued to grow.
“We made it better,” Suarez said. “But it wasn’t good enough. We were running 30th, 28th, 32nd all night long, and that’s what we had. Luckily we had a great Atlanta, decent Watkins Glen after a broken wheel, and we were able to build a cushion, and we definitely used every single point out of that cushion.”
The 32-year-old racer bounced around the bubble throughout the night. After the first two stages, he held a one-point lead over Martin Truex, Jr., and Chase Briscoe. Fortunately for Suarez, Truex was busted for speeding on pit road on Lap 333 and was forced to drop from second to 25th—the tail of the lead lap cars. He finished 24th.
Briscoe also suffered a rough pit stop during the same round of service and dropped 12th. Over the next 20 laps, Briscoe climbed back to fourth but fell off to eighth placing him in tie with Suarez, who entered the race fifth in the standings.
“I can only control so much,” Suarez said. “I can only control what the 99 car can do and everything else is out of my hands. At one point there, I felt bad for the 54 (Truex) because I had to hold him back quite a bit and he got passed, but I had to do that. I wasn’t fast enough to run away from him, so I had to play games to be able to affect him as much as possible in a clean way.
“Yeah, luckily it worked out good. We have to relax a little bit and focus on the next round.”
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