On Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway, Daniel Suarez tried with all his might to get by Matt Crafton on a pair of late race restarts, but wasn’t able to, settling for his second straight runner-up finish.
Suarez ran up front throughout the whole race inside the top-five, moving into the second spot in the late going. When the caution flew with 20 laps to go for Timothy Peters blowing up, he got his opportunity to try and steal a win. He remained side-by-side with Matt Crafton for four laps after the restart, but eventually Crafton pulled away. He got a second chance after a second caution with seven laps to go, but once again watched Crafton’s neon yellow Tundra pull away.
The rookie driver commented post-race that he doesn’t know if there was anything different that he could’ve done on the restart, adding that a conversation with car owner Kyle Busch would help to do better in the future.
“I felt like we had a really fast Toyota Tundra ARRIS truck,” he stated. “I felt we were a little loose on the bottom. It was fine to race side-by-side for a few laps with new tires but with old tires it was either to wreck or to try it and I was close a couple times and I didn’t want to wreck and throw away a good second-place.”
Crafton commented along the same lines as Suarez about the battle, chalking up the difference in the pair of restarts and trucks to the amount of wear on the tires.
“They were fresh on that run when we took off and you can run along the bottom at that point,” Crafton explained. “I knew if I didn’t get him cleared at that point, I was going to have to really work on him and we were side-by-side – it felt like 10 laps, but I knew it wasn’t that long. He almost had me clear a couple times and if he had me cleared, I felt he may have won the race.
“The last restart, we had a little bit more wear on the tires and definitely couldn’t get into the throttle quite as hard there. I wasn’t really happy with restarts on my end; definitely need to work on that a little for sure.”
While he didn’t take home a victory, he picked up his third top-five finish of the season and that’s something that has the Mexican driver leaving Texas very happy.
Notably, though, he has yet to finish outside of the top-nine this season. His success and progression to this point is not only noticed by fans and the media, but also by his fellow competitors.
“He’s done a phenomenal job,” Crafton said. “He has shown a lot of improvement. I remember racing with him at Daytona and then watching him in the Nationwide race and he was definitely a dart without feathers at that point. The kid has definitely put his stuff together. He has ran really, really good and been really impressive.”
If he can keep running up front each week, it’d be no surprise if the No. 51 Arris Toyota ends up in victory lane.
“I feel like we’re getting closer and closer – we’ll get one soon,” Suarez said.