Suarez unconcerned by single-year contract
02/13/2025 03:39 PM
Daniel Suarez said he won't let his future hang over him this season as he competes under the one-year contract extension with Trackhouse Racing.
"At the time when we made this deal, there were a lot of unknowns – on performance mainly," Suarez said in response to a question from RACER. "There were a lot of things that I was not happy about, and there were a lot of question marks, and I feel like right now we're in a little different position. I feel like we have a little bit better direction. So, I feel good about it, honestly. I'm not too concerned about it."
Suarez’s contract extension was announced in August. Even then, he was adamant that the focus was on performance gains — not just with his No. 99 team, but across the board at Trackhouse Racing.
Trackhouse Racing won three races in 2022, with Ross Chastain winning twice and finishing second in the championship and Suarez winning his first NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway. Suarez then went winless in 2023, Chastain won twice, and Trackhouse Racing also had a victory with Shane van Gisbergen on the Chicago street course.
Last year, the roles reversed. Suarez won once, and Chastain went winless and missed the postseason.
"My main thing is to perform and continue to get better because I have said this in the past, and I'm going to say it again: my goal is not to win one race a year," Suarez continued. "If this is what the goal is going to be, we're in two different agendas. And I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.
"How can we bring Trackhouse to the next level? How can we bring Trackhouse to give a real fight to Penske, Hendrick, and Joe Gibbs Racing? The big teams that are every single year up front. How can we do that? I feel like in 2022, we were right there. In 2023, we took one step down. In 2024, another step down. We needed to change something and we went to work. So, hopefully, we can see something reflected in all the offseason work that we did for 2025."
Suarez is one of three full-time drivers Trackhouse Racing is fielding in the Cup Series. The organization also has Connor Zilisch, a rapidly rising 18-year-old phenom, signed to a multiyear development deal. Zilisch currently rides full-time in the Xfinity Series with JR Motorsports and will make his Cup Series debut at Circuit of the Americas.
Cup Series teams are capped at three teams unless additional entries are grandfathered in. That will leave Justin Marks continually having to make decisions about his roster, as he did last year when parting with Zane Smith to make space for Shane van Gisbergen.
However, Suarez is again unfazed by the organization having a deep pipeline.
"There are a lot of things that we have to do to be able to perform – not only me," Suarez said. "Yes, I'm a very important factor in it, but we have to continue to get better as a group. I think Trackhouse does an amazing job with Project 91 and getting this driver (while he’s) young and doing all these different things. But at the end of the day, I worry about myself and I worry about how can I bring myself to have the best opportunity possible to win multiple races a year? That's my main goal.
"Trackhouse has been nothing but great to me and we've been working together very hard to be able to bring Trackhouse to the next level, and that has been my goal. I will say, a year ago right now, it was a little cloudy and we didn't really know where we were going and in the offseason we really made a lot of progress to what I think is heading in the direction that we believe is the best.
"We'll see how things play out, but I hope that we are heading in the right direction."
