Daniel Suarez makes history with first career Cup Series win in Toyota/Save Mart 350, becomes 12th different winner of season
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Sonoma-In a season that has seen a bunch of first-time NASCAR Cup Series, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that another name was added to that list that now includes 202 different winners.
On Sunday afternoon at the Toyota/Save Mart 350, Daniel Suarez became the 12th different winner in the first 16 races of the NASCAR Cup Series season. He also joins Trackhouse Racing teammate Ross Chastain with a spot locked in the playoffs. Chastain finished in seventh, which means both Trackhouse Racing cars finished in the top 10.
Trackhouse Racing is in its second year of competition in the Cup Series and has now won three times after Chastain won the first road course race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas back in March and at Talladega. Trackhouse is also co-owned by music star PitBull.
Suarez also becomes the fifth foreign-born driver to win a Cup Series race and the first born in Mexico. It took 195 Cup Series races for Suarez to get to victory lane.
“It’s a crazy day,” Suarez said after his first career win. “I have so many thoughts in my head right now. I mean, it’s been a rough road. It’s been a rough journey in the Cup Series.”
Team owner Justin Marks said he’s always believed Suarez was the right fit for his first car and for the team as a whole.
“I have never met anyone more focus, more determined, focused, hard working race car driver in my 20 years in this sport,’ Marks said of Suarez. “Every single morning, he wakes up and says ‘I am going to be the best version of myself that I can be today and I’m gonna do all the work I possibly can do today to win this race this weekend’.”
This isn’t the first time that a foreign-born driver has won at Sonoma Raceway either. Back in 2007, Juan Pablo Montoya won on the North Bay road course for his first cup victory. The most recent foreign-born Cup winner was Marcos Ambrose who won his first race in 2011 on the road course in Watkins Glen.
He was able to do it by leading a race-high 47 circuits on the day. Suarez also led the final 26 laps at the 1.99-mile road course.
The day was filled with new names who haven’t won a race this season up at the front. Finishing second, was Chris Buescher.
Buescher picked up the lone win of his career back in 2017 at Pocono, but the Toyota/Save Mart 350 may have been his best chance to punch his ticket to the playoffs that begin in September.
Buescher said this performance was something they knew was possible after running well lately and not getting a good result.
“We’ve had it the last month,” Buescher said of the momentum his team has had over the last four weeks. “We just don’t have anything to show for it.”
2021 Daytona 500 winner and road course ace Michael McDowell finished in third. It was his first top-five finish of the season.
“Our day was good,” McDowell explained. “It was solid, no mishaps. We ran up front all day just didn’t have the pace to hang with those guys early on the front end of a run. But we got better as the run went on, we started to run those guys down with about five laps to go – just ran out of time. But really proud of everybody. We’re making gaines, we’re consistently running the top 10, now making the second round qualifying three out of the last five weeks, so we’re getting closer.”
Rounding out the top five was 2017 Sonoma winner Kevin Harvick who ran up front and had a clean day. Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric finished in fifth. It was Cindric’s first top-five finish since his win at Daytona in February.
On the other end of the joy of victory, is a day that was filled with struggles. For the top Toyota teams of 23XI Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing, the day was a long one as the highest finishing driver in the manufacturer was Kurt Busch who finished in 18th. Bubba Wallace brought out the first caution of the day when his engine expired in turn 4 on lap 11 of the race to end his day.
Joe Gibbs Racing had all four of their drivers finish outside of the top 25. The best finishing driver for Gibbs was Martin Truex Jr in 26th. Christopher Bell finished 27th, Kyle Busch was in 30th and Denny Hamlin in 31st.
For defending race winner, Kyle Larson the day started off great by winning the opening stage of the race. Following a pit stop on lap 82, Larson had his tire come off the car the next lap. That all but ruined his day as he brought it home in 15th. The bigger issue is that crew chief Cliff Daniels will likely be suspended for the next four races.
Chase Elliott leaves Sonoma as the points leader after an eight-place finish.
The NASCAR Cup Series will have its lone-off weekend of the season next week before heading to Nashville SuperSpeedway in Lebanon, Tennessee June 24th-26th. That race weekend will also be the first of NBC Sports NASCAR coverage that will go all the way to the finale at Pheonix.
