DOVER, Del. – 2016 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Daniel Suarez will be the first to tell you that his second season driving the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series hasn’t gone exactly as planned.
After storming into the spotlight towards the latter part of his rookie Cup season in 2017, Suarez has struggled to carry the momentum thus far in 2018.
Three top-10 finishes scattered through the series’ first 10 events, the Monterrey, Mexico native has also had to nurse an injured hand after an early race crash at Texas Motor Speedway last month.
Leaning into Sunday’s AAA 400 Drive for Autism at Dover International Speedway, the NASCAR Next alumnus is confident his team can turn the point and capitalize on back-to-back top-10 finishes at Richmond and Talladega.
“You know, definitely in the first month and a half or so of the season was a little rough. We had speed pretty much everywhere we were going,” said Suarez.
“We just had a lot of inconsistency and for whatever reason, we were not doing a good job putting ourselves in a good position by the end of the races – getting involved in different accidents or just not good positions.”
Suarez admitted Friday morning during his media availability at Dover that they may have been putting too much pressure on himself in his sophomore season of Cup – and now that he has decided to not the let the pressure get the best of him, the 26-year-old is riding three straight top-11 finishes.
“I feel like I was putting maybe a little bit too much pressure on myself to try to do well and the last month or so I’ve been just more relaxed and doing just this without expecting to be great and things are coming our way again,” Suarez added.
The NASCAR Next alumnus says his Joe Gibbs Racing team has had speed in their Toyota through the first stretch of the season – but his inconsistencies have worked against their team to contend for their first win.
“The speed like I said has been there pretty much the entire year,” he said. “It’s just the results and the consistency, but it seems like now we’re heading in the right direction. We came from good, decent few weeks and hopefully, we can keep that up in a place that is actually pretty good for me.”
But if there’s a time where Suarez starts to get his season back on track, this is it.
Suarez believes its still plenty early for his Scott Graves-led team to start producing the finishes he believes that they are capable of. With those finishes come points, hopefully, playoff points – enough that will allow Suarez to be a contender for the first round of the Cup Series post-season Playoff hunt come September at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“Oh yeah, there is plenty of time,” said Suarez of his team’s playoff potential. “I feel like it’s still very early. We – obviously, we can set back because it’s still early, but we’re in a good position. We are running better. We are starting to run where we belong in the top-10.
“Hopefully, we’re going to start running in the top-five and if we can do that, we’re going to be just fine in points, but that’s already not the goal. We want to be able to win races and to be able to make the playoffs – not just to say that we made the playoffs.
“We want to be competitive and we want to be a race team that is going to be able to make in different stages of the playoffs, so that’s the goal – that’s not just to make the playoffs to say that we made. We’re working hard at it and I know that today we are moving in the right direction.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
