KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Upstart teams often face challenges getting up to speed in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Daniel Suarez, who drives the No. 99 car for Trackhouse Racing, knows all about those growing pains after the team’s first season.
“The NASCAR Cup Series is tough,” Suarez said. “You have to have a lot of what I call the whole package together. You have to have a great team — engineers, a good driver, pit crew, everything. If only one part of that is missing, it’s going to be tough. You can maybe hit it once in a while, but it’s going to be tough.”
Experience together and a teammate can be helpful, too.
Suarez, who managed only one top-five and four top-10 finishes en route to a 25th-place finish last season in the Cup Series, is finding that out in 2022.
The addition of a second team — the No. 1 car driven by Ross Chastain — after buying Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR operation has helped Trackhouse, which is co-owned by Justin Marks and rapper Pitbull, flatten the learning curve in its second year.
“It’s true teamwork,” Suarez said. “We have to be there to support each other and to try to make us better. I’m very happy with where we are with that.”
When Chastain struggled in the first two races of the season, Suarez’s team helped their teammates right the ship.
“We’re in lock step on everything we do," Chastain said. “In the car, from a true like sitting in the race car, we couldn’t probably be more different in how we like our seats, our dash, our mirrors, our steering wheel — all the little creature comforts of driving. But once we get on track, our data overlays pretty well in the sense that we can run similar setups.”
Since those initial struggles, Chastain has racked up seven top-five finishes, including two wins, in the last 10 races.
Meanwhile, as Suarez’s team has struggled to find its footing, information from Chastain’s team has helped the No. 99 car get dialed in and start to rebound after struggling through much of April.
That includes Suarez’s first top-10 finish in seven weeks at Darlington Raceway last week. He already has more top-fives (two) and as many top-10s (four) in 13 races this season as he did in 36 last season.
“Ross is a very good driver,” Suarez said. “He’s hungry. He works hard. He has a lot of the characteristics that I believe I have as well, so that makes us work together much easier. It doesn’t take much effort to work together; it comes pretty natural. I know his style, I think he knows mine and, so far, it’s honestly been extremely good.”
Chastain said the feeling is mutual.
“We are closer than I’ve ever been with another teammate, because, although we compete against each other, it’s not a competition about who’s going to beat each other inside of Trackhouse,” he said.
Suarez, who hopes to qualify for the playoffs this season for the first time in six seasons as a full-time Cup Series driver, believes more big things are coming for Trackhouse.
“I feel like this year that we’re going to be able to win races,” he said. “I feel like we have the tools to be able to do it. We have the people, the cars, the sponsors and the manufacturer support to do it. That’s obviously very exciting. We just have to go out and do our job.”
