NXS: Daniel Suarez Scores First XFINITY Top-Five

Daniel Suarez’s learning curve in the NASCAR XFINITY Series continued to take a solid road ahead, with the Mexican driver scoring his first career top-five at Bristol Motor Speedway, finishing the Drive to Stop Diabetes 300 in second.

“I just can’t believe it,” he stated. “I can’t explain to you in words right now what I’m feeling in Spanish or English. I can’t thank enough my team – Joe Gibbs Racing, ARRIS, Toyota and everyone who makes this possible. This is unbelievable, this feeling. We work hard and sometimes it’s hard like last weekend in Texas – we were strong and hit the wall and finished 18th. Today we were fast all day long and we ended up in the second spot so that’s great.”

Suarez had a good car all race and ran inside the top-10 all day, cracking the top-five during the second half of the race.

“We improved the car at every single stop and that’s the most important thing is to learn, to improve and to be honest my team at Joe Gibbs Racing with the ARRIS Toyota, everyone is doing an amazing job,” he stated. “They are having a lot of patience with me as a rookie and it’s been a good day. I’m very happy.”

The top-five finish is huge for the driver who was racing in the NASCAR Mexico Series and K&N Pro Series last year, and says this is a big jump that he is taking in his career.

“It’s been a long year so far – learning a lot and learning about the team and spending a lot of time at the shop. To be honest, in Daytona I was kind of disappointed with myself because I was pretty off from everyone else,” he commented. “Just keep working and everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing has been super good with me, having a lot of patience and supported me a lot in my rookie racing career. We are going to make a lot of mistakes and if we can make that amount of mistakes smaller and smaller then we’re going to be better and better. The goal for us is to try to finish races and finish in the top-10 more often and more often. We can’t think about championships, we just need to think to improve and to learn and to finish in the top-10 every weekend.”

One of the people who has been helping Suarez is Kyle Busch, who has been offering advice about “a little bit of everything”. The connection between the two started when Suarez started racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports, but has grown even more since Texas. The other big help has been the improvement in communication between team members, and getting that more fluid moving forward.

“When I moved to the United States three years ago I didn’t speak English at all so definitely every race we have been improving and improving,” he commented. “Right now I feel very comfortable, almost like Spanish. That’s a very cool thing that my mind is slowly thinking now in English instead of thinking in Spanish and then translating everything to English. That takes time. On the race track we don’t have that time.”