Smoking car and incomplete NASCAR team? No sweat for Daniel Suárez heading to Auto Club
.JPG "Daniel Suarez’s car kicks up grass as it slide across the infield after a crashing with Ryan Blaney’s car during a NASCAR Daytona 500 qualifying auto race Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020, at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)")
A few days before Daniel Suárez geared up for his second race with a new team, the No. 96 driver talked about having pre-race jitters.
“I’m super nervous,” Suárez said. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
Really?
“No, I’m just kidding,” Suárez said with a laugh. “It’s good. It’s a new project. We have a lot of stuff going on and there’s still a lot to learn and to prove, but overall, I’m just very happy to be in this position.”
Suárez, who signed with Gaunt Brothers Racing a month ago, was as breezy and comfortable as the Southern California air surrounding him as he prepared to compete in Sunday’s Auto Club 400. His upbeat attitude was almost as surprising as the hyper-nervousness he joked about, considering his team failed to qualify for the Daytona 500 and finished 30th in last week’s Las Vegas race.
“I have great people around me and I feel like the future is bright,” Suárez, 28, said. “We just have to work hard and keep pushing in the right direction.”
For some drivers, those early races would be cause for alarm, or at least massive frustration; Suárez crashed out of a qualifying Duel to miss entry for the Daytona 500 for the first time in his career. Then, his Toyota Camry started smoking less than halfway through the first lap of the Pennzoil 400 to put him behind for the entirety of the race. But Suarez said he’s not worried. In fact, he said he left Las Vegas “happy.”
“Not because I finished 30th,” Suárez said. “But I was happy because the team showed some good speed. The team showed some good pit stops. The spotter did a very good job. The crew chief did good adjustments. I was like, ‘Okay, actually I can work with this.’”
Suárez and his crew chief, Dave Winston, know there is still a lot of work to be done around team communication, car adjustments and even hiring decisions. The 96 team currently fields around 30 members, but is still looking to hire at least one other engineer and a few other crew members, according to Suárez.
It wasn’t until just a few weeks before the opening race that the team even knew if and how it would be running this season. On January 28, GBR announced Suárez as the No. 96 driver to run a full schedule in the Cup Series (the team previously ran a limited schedule).
“We’ve been working toward this moment since Gaunt Brothers Racing joined the Cup Series in 2017,” said team president Marty Gaunt in a statement. “We’ve made steady improvement every year, but bringing Daniel on board allows us to take a giant leap forward. We’re investing in each other. He’s not content to just be here and neither are we.”
Suárez has been an active team leader so far, from his input on hiring decisions to pitching new gear to be auctioned in honor of Kobe Bryant at this weekend’s race. The depth of his involvement is not something all drivers are comfortable with, but Suarez said it’s part of who he is.
“I have learned a lot in the last few years,” Suárez said. “I like to be involved in decisions, the people, in everything, and I feel like that way, we can grow as a team.”
Suárez won the Xfinity Series championship for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2016 and went on to drive for the reigning Cup championship team in NASCAR’s highest series the following two seasons. In 2019, he joined Stewart-Haas Racing before returning to a Toyota car this year.
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He said he is carrying what he learned from his time driving for dominant organizations such as JGR and Stewart-Haas into his building his latest team. That’s part of why he’s not rushing into approving another engineer nor is he worried about his current ranking. Good things, he said, take time.
“It’s everything about the people,” Suárez said. “It doesn’t really matter how big or small the team is, but if you have good people, you can make it work.”
Gaunt Brothers does not currently have a charter, meaning that when there are more than 40 teams entered in an event, it is up to Suárez to earn his place in the competition on speed. In January, GBR said that acquiring a charter was a top priority for the organization, but until it has one, the 96 team will need to work on running faster to ensure their spot.
Although Suárez is guaranteed for Sunday’s race, which has an entry list of 38 teams, Winston said he did not feel like the car was where it needed to be after Friday’s final practice. Suárez finished in the bottom three.
“We’re not up to speed like we need to be and the car’s just too tight,” Winston said. “I’m trying to figure out how much of it’s aero and how much of it’s the balance of the car.”
When both Winston and Suárez zoom out to discuss their goals for the season, however, they said they are on track.
“Daniel’s real good,” Winston said about the Monterrey, Mexico native. “Not knowing him, I was a little worried about the language barrier, but so far we are feeling pretty good. We’re going to learn each other.”
Their goals for the season also align, with this year’s focus simply being “improvement.”
“By the end of the year, we want to feel like we can show up and be competitive,” Winston said. “Competitive for a win? Maybe not. Ideally that would be the case, but when we show up, feeling like we can race for a top-15. That’s where I’d like to be.”
Far from nervousness, his driver agreed with the positive, yet realistic outlook.
“You can’t build something good overnight,” Suárez said. “It’s going to take a little bit of time.”
“But we have great people around us and we’re going to get there.”
This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Smoking car and incomplete NASCAR team? No sweat for Daniel Suárez heading to Auto Club."
