SPARTA, Ky. – Daniel Suarez had a fast No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang on Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway.
And thank god for that.
The Quaker State 400 presented by Walmart pole-sitter led the first 49 laps of the race – and while handling and strategy came into play during Stage 1, the Monterrey, Mexico native dropped from the top spot to 14th at the end of Stage 1.
While trying to recover during Stage 2 on varying strategies, when the opportunity came to make it to the end of Stage 2 on fuel, crew chief Billy Scott called his driver to pit road for a scheduled stop. Suarez, though, got busted for speeding and had to make an unscheduled stop that found him three laps in the arrears and 33rd on the race grid.
Refusing to give up, Suarez would drive back to just one lap down and a 29th place finish at the end of Stage 2 to find himself in the hunt to get back on the lead lap during the final stage of the race.
On the restart to start Stage 3, Suarez began hunting down the competition and found himself back on the lead lap at Lap 180 when the caution flag flew.
Despite having to restart at the tail end of the longest line, Suarez used a fast race car and precision driving to maneuver himself back through the field and by Lap 200 was stalking a return to the top-10 approaching green flag pit stops.
Following the cycle of green-flag pit stops, Suarez had climbed to ninth and found himself an opportunity to get a better finish when Darrell Wallace Jr. spun with less than six laps in the race.
Even though they were back in the top-10, Scott decided to bring the former NASCAR Xfinity Series champion back to pit road for four tires and fuel to the finish and while restarting 11th, Suarez was able to hustle back into the top-10 during the two lap sprint and finish eighth, his seventh top-10 of the season.
“It was an eventful night for sure,” said Suarez. “We just had a fast race car but we got a bit tight. I feel like we made the car better, but we never got the track position back.”
Suarez talked about his mistake earlier in the race when he thought he had a tire going down and falling into his pit window ultimately ended up being the portion of the race that turned his night upside down.
“We had a tire going down and then I was speeding coming to pit road because I was wheel hopping because of the tire. It was one problem after another.
“We were fast enough to overcome that but not enough to get a better finish. I feel like the good thing is that we have the speed we just have to keep working to have a cleaner day and keep working to try to keep that speed the whole race.”
Despite the solid finish on Saturday night, Suarez wasn’t satisfied with his night and knows his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing team needs to do better in the summer races to ensure their Playoff run.
“I feel like the first stage the call that we made on four tires instead of two tires kind of messed us up a little bit. That is part of it. We made our bed on that,” he added.
“There was one caution after another and we couldn’t recover. After that, we had the flat tire. It was just bad decisions and a little bad luck but we were able to overcome with a decent finish.”
Desperately fighting to make the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Suarez leaves Kentucky with confidence and while 18th in the standings, he’s just four points behind the cutoff position.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
