NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona International Speedway
Team Chevy Driver Quotes
August 28, 2026
Daniel Suarez, driver of the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season finale weekend at Daytona International Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
Are you officially on baby watch yet, or are you a few weeks out?
“It is funny you ask that question because we were just talking that last night I had my official hospital tour, and I’m ready to drive as quick as possible, whenever the moment presents. Hopefully I’m home for that. I already know which floor I have to go, where I can park, where I’m going to chill, where I’m going to stress. I had an hour-and-a-half tour last night.
I think it’s considered already full term because we are getting into 38 weeks, so it can happen anytime. She can call me right now and say, hey, you have to come back. We’ll see how things happen. Hopefully, things work out for me to be there.”
Speaking of that, what’s the plan? Do you have a plan to leave the team and have a backup driver? Are you going to be here? What’s the strategy?
“Honestly, I haven’t really had a conversation with anyone about this besides with myself. My strategy, in my mind, is that if baby was coming like right now, I think it will be okay for me to skip qualifying. That’s just me saying that, just because it’s a superspeedway. Any other weekend, I don’t think that would be the case, especially being in the Chase. If it’s Saturday or Sunday, I think it’s going to be tough. Julia and I, we already had a conversation, but hopefully it’s a Monday through Friday baby (laughs).”
Do you have any idea who the team may have as a standby?
“I have no idea. Do you want to sign up? We’re looking for someone. He has to speak Spanish now (laughs).’
With these new superspeedway changes for tomorrow, do you have any idea of what the racing will be like potentially?
“Personally, I love unknowns. I love the challenge of something new. I find that actually quite exciting. I don’t think anyone really knows. We study data and we study information, but the reality is that – it has happened several times in the past where we study all the different things and then sometimes the numbers, the data, it doesn’t match exactly with real life.
My mind is just to be open-minded; try to have fun and try to adapt. If we get lucky, we’re going to have one lap in qualifying, if it doesn’t rain. And then, we go tomorrow for racing. Nobody’s going to know what to expect. I think that we have a great group of engineers that have worked very hard during the week to try to prepare for as much as adjustability on the car as possible to be prepared for any scenarios. But the reality is that we don’t really know. We don’t know if it’s going to be a super tight pack or if everyone is going to be spread out. We don’t really know. We’re going to have to wait and see.”
Can you just kind of describe your comfort level now? Last year, the system was so different, as far as how you got into the playoffs. But you did this on merit. You did this on just the type of numbers that you put out. To be able to do that, what’s your comfort level now going into the Chase?
“Yeah. It’s everything about the people. You have to have the right people around you and everything clicking at the right time, as well as the right manufacturer time. Right now, we know that Chevrolet has been working very, very hard to try to improve our packages, especially on short tracks. Overall, I feel pretty good about our team. We know our strengths, and we also know our weaknesses. We’ve been working hard and trying to improve those weaknesses.
We still have a lot to improve. I believe that we’re a very young team still with a bright future ahead, but we’re still very young. Jonathan, my engineer and I, we talk about this all the time that him and I, we don’t have a notebook built yet. Most of the racetracks, 90% of the racetracks that we’ve been this year, it’s our first time ever working together. We’re building the notebook and I promise you that the second time around on some of these tracks, we’re going to be better just because now we have an experience, not just basing things off previous experience with a different driver, with a different package and things like that. I believe that the potential of this team is big and we are only seeing the beginning of it.”
You’re wrapping up your first regular season with Spire tomorrow night and you’re already locked in the Chase. What has the move to Spire and the success you’ve had with the 7 team meant for you at this point in your career?
“It’s not a secret that last year, the 7 team was struggling and Daniel Suarez was struggling in different places, in different situations, with different circumstances. But we both were struggling. I know how good I am. I know what I’m capable of and Spire Motorsports is the same way. They have great people and they have a good structure. They have a good system. They knew that they can make the team successful. When we started having conversations at the end of last year, about this year, I knew that they had the pieces of the puzzle within the team to be successful, but we needed to build the puzzle. We worked very hard for that. Obviously, it’s been a lot of fun to see some of the results of that hard work. With that being said, we still have a long ways to go. We’re not winning on a weekly basis yet. We still have a long ways to go.
I like to be very honest with myself. I would be lying if I told you that right now we’re championship favorites. We’re not, but we are working towards that. We just have to keep pushing, keep learning, keep getting better and stay humble because it’s very easy to not stay humble in this sport. I have seen many horror stories when it comes to that. We just need to keep moving forward.”
Coming into this weekend with the aero changes, should there have been practice of some form, even just a few minutes, for everybody to get a feel for it?
“That’s a great question, Kelly. But I think that even if there was practice, I feel like NASCAR knows this — even if there was practice, I feel like it would have helped, yes. But we’re not going to experience what we’re going to experience tomorrow night because there were going to be packages of maybe 10 cars, 12 cars, 15 car max, and that’s kind of like maybe. And tomorrow, it’s going to be 36, 38 of us. It would have been nice, but I don’t think that we’re going to learn everything that we’re going to learn tomorrow. Sometimes a little bit is better than nothing, but who knows?
Like I said, personally, I believe very highly on my engineers. I feel like I have a great group of guys, and they’ve been working very hard all week long to try to make our car as versatile as possible because we don’t know if the adjustments are going to ask for left or right. So just trying to be versatile is going to be important because there is going to be a lot of cars, especially if we don’t qualify today, there’s going to be a lot of cars making adjustments in Stage One tomorrow.”
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