Not on the same team anymore…
Daniel Suarez is in his first season driving for Spire Motorsports after spending the past five seasons with Trackhouse Racing, where he was a teammate to the driver of the #1 car, Ross Chastain.
But it appears there’s no love lost between the former teammates.
Both Chastain and Suarez struggled during today’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with Chastain finishing 17th and Suarez one spot behind him in 18th.
Chastain managed to get around Suarez to pick up a spot with just 2 laps left in the race. But once the checkered flag waved, it appears that something had the driver of the #1 car upset with his former teammate.
Cameras captured Chastain bumping Suarez as they headed to pit road. And once both drivers got out of their cars, Suarez walked over to Chastain as the two had a heated conversation.
At one point Chastain pushed Suarez before the two were quickly separated, and I’m not a lip reader but it appears that Chastain asked Suarez several times if he wanted to fight.
Eventually Chastain walked away, and he declined to comment on what started the altercation, but it didn’t appear that the two had any obvious incidents on the track before the checkered flag waved so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what led up to the heated confrontation.
It’s clear that Suarez isn’t exactly a fan of his former team: Since leaving Trackhouse, his comments have alluded to the fact that he felt like he wasn’t a priority for the team that also fielded cars for Chastain and Shane Van Gisbergen last season. And last week, when Suarez qualified in 4th place at Phoenix Raceway, his wife Julia Piquet took a not-so-subtle shot at Daniel’s former team:
Following the confrontation today, Suarez admitted that his relationship with Chastain has always been “very weird,” calling his former teammate “two-faced.”
Throughout his career at Trackhouse, Suarez managed to win 2 races and finish a career-best 10th in points in 2022. But despite being the organization’s inaugural driver, he was never really able to break through to become a championship contender.
Things started better for Suarez this season at Spire, with a 13th place finish in the Daytona 500 and a 5th place finish at Atlanta the following week. But since then, he’s finished a disappointing 25th at Circuit of the Americas and 30th at Phoenix following his 4th place qualifying run, and after his finish today at Vegas is sitting 17th in points, outside of the cutoffs for the Chase.
It’s not going much better for Chastain over at Trackhouse though: He’s currently 20th in points following finishes of 35th at COTA due to losing a wheel and 28th at Phoenix, where he was wrecked by Joey Logano on a restart late in the race.
Although it’s still early in the season, there’s no doubt that both drivers are frustrated with how their season’s going so far, especially on a day where they weren’t able to run much better than the middle of the pack. So it’s not really a surprise to see those frustrations boiling over on pit road.
And both have experience throwing hands if it comes to that: Suarez got into an altercation with Michael McDowell a few years ago at Phoenix.
@nascar Michael McDowell and Daniel Suárez agree to disagree at Phoenix in 2019. #NASCAR
And Ross Chastain famously landed a punch on Noah Gragson during a heated confrontation at Kansas.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DJe1nbKPSVR/
This one might have been fun to watch…and it might be a new rivalry to keep an eye on this season.
