NASCAR CUP SERIES
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
DAYTONA 500 MEDIA DAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
FEBRUARY 12, 2025
Daniel Suarez, driver of the No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet – DAYTONA 500 Media Day Quotes
Q. Four of you representing four different countries. What has that been like, the diversity of teammates? What language do you speak?
DANIEL SUAREZ: So far English. So far we speak in English (laughter).
Actually I have a lot of people don’t know this, but I have a very hard time understanding Shane. His English, I don’t know. I don’t know if you guys do the same or not, but my English clearly is way more limited than most of you guys. Every time he’s talking to me, I really have to pay attention. 80% of the time I have to have him repeat something because his accent is just way different than what I’m used to, I guess.
Q. Does he understand you?
DANIEL SUAREZ: I hope. He hasn’t complained. I hope (laughter).
No, it’s been great. Obviously Trackhouse has been known for the last several years to do things like this. So I’m not surprised having a teammate from New Zealand and another one from Brazil and myself. I guess Ross is the outlier right now.
It’s been a lot of fun. Hopefully we can translate that to good results on Sunday.
Q. What has it been like having Helio around this program? What advice have you given to him?
DANIEL SUAREZ: I mean, Helio, he doesn’t have experience in NASCAR, but he has so much experience in life and in racing in general. Really I’ve been talking to him quite a bit about the car, what to expect on the car, what to do, what not to do.
When it comes to the racing stuff, it’s no different than learning anything else new. Like, he’s been in these situations in the past. He’s a world-class driver. He’s going to get it. I’m not concerned about if he’s going to get it, the question is when. Is that going to happen on Thursday or on Sunday?
He’s going to be fine. He’s going to become a fast learner when we get to the draft.
Q. Can you take me through the final laps of your win in Atlanta. Kyle and Blaney were second-guessing what they should have done. What gave you the confidence to do what you did?
DANIEL SUAREZ: Honestly, I didn’t have many options because Austin Cindric was the driver that was behind me. He was lifting a lot, just trying not to help me. Obviously his teammate was leading the race at that time. My options were very limited when it comes to the second lane, trying to create a run.
The 47 of Ricky, he was being very aggressive on the rear bumper of the 2. Even with that, I can see it, I can feel it. I was able to see it on Monday on SMT. He was doing everything possible not to help me, which is okay, right? That’s part of the game.
I knew the run was not going to come from me, it was going to come from the inside. My job at that point was to try to slow down the 8 as much as possible for the 23 to get to him – it’s a chess match a chess game – to get to him and build the run. Hopefully I was going to be right there to take advantage of that run. Luckily it work out like that. The timing of things…
Any of us could have won that race. It was a matter of inches. It was just a matter of timing. Fortunately the timing work out good for me.
Q. Is it good to sit down with those other guys and rewatch this recently? Was it fun?
DANIEL SUAREZ: It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Even more fun for me, right, because I was the one that won the race. Probably wouldn’t have been that much fun if I finished second or third.
In general it was a lot of fun because it was the first time we got to sit down and actually see it together and talk about it, talk about what was on Blaney’s mind, what was in Busch’s mind, in my mind. Obviously everyone had a different mindset of what to do, what not to do.
Blaney, he said, Man, I should have covered the middle. I covered the bottom. That create two of you instead of one of you.
A lot of the ‘I should have, I should have done that, I should have done that.’ Yeah, at the same time probably I really wanted to be on the outside. Once I got in front of the 19 and I passed the 19, I said, Man, I’m in the perfect spot here. I realized the 2 was behind me. I was like, Dammit, he’s not going to help me.
It’s kind of tricky. Is not very easy to plan everything perfectly because things change very quickly.
Q. Where do you feel the team is at right now knowing there’s a lot of eyeballs with Helio and Shane? What is going to be key this season to get to the next step?
DANIEL SUAREZ: We have to be realistic, right? Shane, he has a long way to go when it comes to ovals. We know that. He has a lot of things that he has to learn and to continue to get better at in ovals. He’s going to rely on Ross and myself a lot when it comes to that.
Helio, he’s just trying to learn as much as quickly as possible because this is his opportunity, right? This is his opportunity to have a good day, to have a strong race. I mean, if he finish somewhere close to the top 10, that would be like a win for him. That would be amazing for Project 91.
Ross and myself, we want to continue to grow from everything we built from last year. There were a lot of internal changes within Trackhouse. We are hoping that we see more consistent results throughout the year.
Q. (Question about future racing contracts.)
DANIEL SUAREZ: No, I mean, at the time when we made this deal, there were a lot of unknowns on performance mainly. There were a lot of things that I was not happy about. There were a lot of things, a lot of question marks.
I feel like right now we are a little bit in a different position. I feel like right now we have a little better direction. I feel good about it honestly. I’m not too concerned about it.
I mean, my main thing is to continue to perform. I have to continue to get better because I have said this in the past, I’m going to say it again: My goal is not to win one race a year. If this is what the goal is going to be, we’re in two different agendas.
I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page that, Okay, how can we bring Trackhouse to the next level? How can we bring Trackhouse to give a real fight to Penske, to Hendrick, to Joe Gibbs Racing, to the big teams that they are every single year up front? How can we do that?
I feel like 2022 we were right there. 2023 we did one step down. 2024, another step down. We need to change something. We went to work. Hopefully we can see something reflected in all the off-season work that we did for 2025.
Q. Trackhouse has a lot of drivers signed. Do you ever worry that your job is in jeopardy, your seat is on the line?
DANIEL SUAREZ: No, because there is a lot of things. There is a lot of things involved. It’s not just the perform thing. There’s a lot of things that we have to do to be able to perform.
It not only depends on me. Yes, I’m a very important factor of it. But we have to continue to get better as group. I think Trackhouse does an amazing job with Project 91, getting this driver young, do all these different things.
At the end of the day I’m only worried about myself. I’m worried about how can I bring myself to have the best opportunity to win multiple races a year? That’s my main goal.
Really Trackhouse has been nothing but great to me. We’ve been working together very hard to be able to bring Trackhouse to the next level. That has been my goal.
I would say a year ago right now it was a little cloudy. We didn’t really know where we were going. In the off-season we really made a lot of progress to what I think heading into the direction that we believe is the best.
We see. We see how things play out. But yeah, I hope that we are heading in the right direction.
Q. Are drivers athletes?
DANIEL SUAREZ: I don’t know. You tell me.
Q. I think you are. What is special about your training or skill or strength that separates you?
DANIEL SUAREZ: The thing is that this is the part that is very difficult. Anyone here, anyone has play soccer. Anyone has play baseball. Anyone has played basketball. Anyone can go to the park and do it. It is very easy. In any park, anyone can play all these sports.
Racing is way more complicated. Racing, it requires a track. It requires tires, an engine, a car, all these things. It’s expensive. Unfortunately not a lot of people has the opportunity to actually experience what racing is.
But if you look at the heart rate monitors, if you look at the physical activity we’re having when we are driving these cars. The temperature? Right now, the day is nice, but in June, July, it’s a completely different game.
If you’re looking to all these things is when you actually realize all the wear and tear that we have inside the car.
But the problem is that not a lot of people knows or understand that because they don’t have an experience in racing. They do have an experience in soccer, baseball, basketball, everything else.
Yeah, in my opinion we’re high-performance athletes, especially because of the heat. The heat is something personally I train on the heat a lot to be 100% in the summer races.
So yeah, but I just wish every single person out there had an opportunity to drive a car and to feel what we feel so they understand and we don’t have to explain to everyone what it is.
Q. From a marketing perspective, what could the sport or NASCAR do to make the drivers look like superheroes but also recognize the stars on the rise compared to nostalgia-centric?
DANIEL SUAREZ: That’s a great question, man. I don’t know if I have the perfect answer for that.
I think that every time that I think about a race car driver, I think about this person that works very hard and has this good leadership within his race team or her race team. This role model is this hero, right? It’s like this warrior that is ready to battle. That’s great. I enjoy that.
I wish we can show racing drivers that way, show the personality, but show them as heroes, as warriors out there ready to battle.
I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like we look more funny than the cool factor and the warrior factor. I don’t know. I think a lot has changed.
I don’t really know. I don’t think I have the right answer. I just wish it was more of a cool hero factor than just the funny factor.
Q. You aren’t afraid of speed. What are you afraid of?
DANIEL SUAREZ: I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know what is the fear. I don’t know what is the fear, man. I don’t know, man. Honestly I’m trying to think. That’s a great question. Something I have fear of?
I don’t know. I don’t want to say that I’m fearless because that’s not. But I don’t know what I have fear of, honestly.
Like, I work very hard to be the best version of myself and try to bring my A game every single day on everything I do. On the racetrack, going fast is amazing, I love that.
You don’t think about wrecks. You don’t think about accidents. You don’t think about getting hurt. You don’t think about those things. Those things happen sometimes. You don’t think about it.
I can tell you something. The day that I feel like I start thinking too much about it, maybe is the day that I have to decide to do something else because maybe I’m going to start attracting those things.
But today, I don’t think about it. I just do what I love to do.
Q. When you look at superspeedways, Daytona, the numbers you’ve struggled, but Atlanta next week, really good.
DANIEL SUAREZ: I don’t know.
Q. What are the differences there?
DANIEL SUAREZ: I don’t know. Daytona is tricky, man. Man, it’s just very tricky. I have made a lot of mistakes myself here in Daytona. I’m telling you, man, 80% of the time I’ve been caught in wrecks, I’m not doing anything wrong. It just happens. Last time we were here I wrecked being maybe in the top five, so… You are just caught in those situations.
Yes, there is a few things I can do different, I can do better, but that’s not the reason why I wrecked.
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