Matt Swiderski will be replacing Travis Mack as the crew chief for Daniel Suarez and the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team for the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.
The news comes as the Chicago native is coming off his third season as a Cup Series crew chief for Kaulig Racing’s No. 16 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 entry. During the three-year stint, Swiderski achieved victories with veteran AJ Allmendinger at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course in August 2021 and at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course last October. During the previous season, he also led Allmendinger and the No. 16 team to a total of four top-five results and seven top-10 results before settling in 21st place in the final driver’s standings.
“Everyone sees what Trackhouse Racing is building and I am thankful for the opportunity to come to a winning organization and lead the No. 99 team,” Swiderski said. “I am looking forward to working with Daniel. We are both striving to achieve the same thing, winning. Every day we are going to work on perfecting the next steps that it takes to get more wins and compete for a championship.”
Swiderski, who received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University before attaining a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, spent the bulk of his early racing career at Richard Childress Racing, where he first worked as a data acquisition engineer before ascending towards becoming a race engineer both on the Xfinity and Cup Series divisions. After briefly departing NASCAR to join Space Exploration Technologies as a loads engineer in 2012, he returned to both NASCAR and Richard Childress Racing eight months later by assuming the title of chief race engineer, where he would eventually be named head of vehicle performance in 2014.
In 2017, Swiderski made his inaugural presence as a crew chief in the Xfinity Series, where he worked atop the pit box of RCR’s No. 3 Chevrolet Camaro entry that was piloted between Ty Dillon, Scott Lagasse Jr. and Brian Scott. Throughout the season, the No. 3 entry obtained four top-five results and 18 top-10 results before ending up in 11th place in the final owner’s standings. The following season, Swiderski joined Team Penske and worked as a crew chief for the team’s No. 12 Ford Mustang entry that was competing on a limited basis with rookie Austin Cindric and Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski, with the trio achieving a single top-five result and a combined five top-10 results in eight starts. Swiderski would lead the No. 12 team to a combined five top-five results and three poles in eight races, with the entry split between Ryan Blaney, Keselowski, Joey Logano and Paul Menard, before serving as Keselowski’s Xfinity crew chief for a single event in 2020 and two for Ty Dillon in 2021.
During the 2021 season, Swiderski joined Kaulig Racing as a crew chief for the team’s No. 16 entry in the Cup Series that was split between AJ Allmendinger, Kaz Grala and Justin Haley. He would remain as the crew chief for the No. 16 entry for the 2022 Cup season that was split between Allmendinger, Noah Gragson and Daniel Hemric before Allmendinger assumed the ride on a full-time basis in 2023.
Through 78 appearances as a Cup Series crew chief, Swiderski has achieved two victories, nine top-five results and 20 top-10 results while working with five different competitors.
The 2024 Cup Series season will mark Swiderski’s first at Trackhouse Racing and first being paired with Suarez. The 32-year-old Suarez from Monterrey, Mexico, is coming off his seventh full-time campaign in the Cup circuit and third with Trackhouse, where he recorded a pole position at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, three top-five results, 10 top-10 results, 48 laps led and an average-finishing result of 19.0 before settling in 19th place in the 2023 driver’s standings. His first and latest victory to date occurred at Sonoma Raceway in June 2022, a victory that enabled him to make the 2022 Playoffs before settling in 10th place in the final driver’s standings.
“Matt is a proven winner with a dynamic engineering background, and we are confident he will pair well with Daniel,” Justin Marks, Trackhouse founder and owner, added.
Matt Swiderski’s first Cup Series campaign as a crew chief for Daniel Suarez and Trackhouse Racing commences with the Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on February 4, with the event’s coverage to occur at 8 p.m. ET on FOX, followed by the 66th running of the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway that will occur on February 18, with the event’s coverage to occur at 2:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
