Photo Credit: Justin McFarland
For the third straight race this season, Daniel Suarez had a top-10 finish as he would finish second to Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch.
It looked as though one point Suarez would be able to close on his teammate on the restart, however, that was not the case as Busch was able to spread the gap back out as the laps round down.
“Honestly, I just felt like it took me too much time to figure out how to be fast with a loose race car in traffic,” Suarez commented. “I think at the end we would have been able to figure it out, but it took me 10 laps and I lost two seconds there and it was too difficult to catch those seconds back. I’m proud of everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing and the entire 19 ARRIS Toyota team – they did an amazing job. It was super fast, one of the fastest out there all race long. We were just a little short.”
The strong finish gives Suarez the points lead, three points ahead of Elliott Sadler. Though per the Mexican driver, it’s too early to be worrying about the standings.
“With the new Chase format, anything can happen,” he said. “You need to win a race to be safe and lock yourself into the Chase. At the same time, we can win the race and if we don’t have the shot to win the race, we need to keep working with the consistency. It’s something we need to keep working to find more speed and try to win a race to be even more comfortable.”
Suarez has the tools in place to contend, in the form of fast cars from Joe Gibbs Racing this year thus far, and working with Scott Graves as a crew chief, who led Chris Buescher to the championship last year at Roush Fenway Racing.
It’s just a matter if he can keep the momentum going moving forward.
