By David Morgan, Associate Editor
LEBANON, Tenn. – Momentum is a powerful thing in the NASCAR Cup Series garage and last weekend’s winner Daniel Suarez is hoping to capitalize on it heading into this weekend’s race at Nashville Superspeedway.
A week ago, Suarez found himself in the right place at the right time, in the lead of the Coca-Cola 600 when the race was called due to inclement weather delivering a special win to Suarez and the No. 7 Spire Motorsports team on a weekend in which the sport was mourning the loss of Kyle Busch.
The win was the first for Suarez in his first season with Spire, a team based out of the shop that previously housed Busch’s NASCAR Truck Series team, Kyle Busch Motorsports.
Suarez explained that being able to roll his confetti covered Chevrolet back into that building helped start the healing process on a tough weekend for everyone in the sport, including all of those employed at Spire, where Busch also competed in the Truck Series on a part-time basis.
“It was a very special win. To be able to bring the car full of confetti, along with the trophy, the ring and all those things, back to the KBM shop, I would say it was the highlight of the week,” said Suarez.
“It was very, very special. I felt like I enjoyed it a lot and the entire team enjoyed it a lot. We celebrated the victory for a few days, but now it’s time to move on, right? We have another task today and tomorrow.”
With the Charlotte win, Spire now has two wins on the season, along with Carson Hocevar’s triumph at Talladega last month, lending credibility to the team as it works toward building its master plan to become a major player in the sport.
When Suarez found himself on the outs last season looking for a new home, he explained that one place he wanted to land was at Spire, having seen the vision for what they were building and the incremental performance gains the team was achieving.
Now in house at Spire, he is seeing everything come to fruition.
“I don’t know about you guys, but for me, it’s not a surprise. I saw this coming from Spire Motorsports from the outside looking in since last year, and that’s why I joined this organization,” said Suarez.
“This team has been hiring great talent. They have a very good foundation, which is being led by Jeff Dickerson, Bill Anthony and a lot of great people. When you see something like this, the team keeps growing and good sponsors are supporting the program, it’s just going to continue to get better because the foundation is strong. The structure is solid.”
He added that while the performance gains the team has experience this season aren’t unexpected, there is still more to build on as the remainder of the season plays out to really get them where they want to be.
At the midway point of the regular season, Suarez currently sits 10th in points.
“I’m not surprised that we are to this point. With that being said, we still have work to do. In my mind – yes, we won last weekend and we did an amazing job executing the race at the end, but we still have a little bit of work to do. We just have to continue to push, continue to get better and continue to be honest with ourselves on the areas that we still have work to do.”
Suarez’s teammate at Spire, Michael McDowell, echoed those thoughts about seeing the vision at Spire before joining the team in 2025 to everything now playing out as they had hoped performance-wise.
“I think that there was a lot of questions about what I was doing and why I was going, and I felt like I had a good feel for what was coming,” said McDowell. “And I think this is what was coming, is running up front and having shot at winning races and I’m glad that it’s all coming to fruition now.
“It’s just been a lot of people working really hard at Spire to build a program and get better and better every week, and I feel like we’ve done that.”
Coming into the weekend at Nashville, Suarez will hope to parlay those same performance gains into a solid run on the 1.33-mile concrete oval. In five previous starts at the track, Suarez has just one top-10 finish, with a seventh-place result in 2021.
With qualifying washed out, Suarez will have a prime starting position, rolling off from third-place when the green flag drops on Sunday. The Cracker Barrel 400 is scheduled for 7:00 pm ET on Amazon Prime.
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