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Daniel Suarez and Trackhouse Racing faced an uphill battle at Martinsville. While they made strides throughout the 500 lap race, the Mexican's day ended in 32nd place after his car caught on fire. Suarez was able to put out the flames, but he wasn't happy with the arrival time of the safety officials.
After the incident, Daniel Suarez told reporters:
"First of all, I saw a couple of cars on fire, so luckily nobody got hurt. I was a bit surprised that the safety people took a long time to get to my car. I tried to make sure everything was good to stop the fire, but for some reason, they just weren’t stopping the fire. In that wreck, there wasn’t really anything I could do. I was trying to slam on the brakes to try to slow down, but it was a parking lot in there. I couldn’t do anything about it."
A 12-car pileup affected Daniel Suarez's race
Daniel Suarez also made it a point to throw a piece of his HANS device at William Byron's car during the ensuing caution, underscoring the Mexican's anger at the situation. Even more frustrating for Suarez was that his involvement in the 12-car accident could have been avoided if Byron hadn't run into him.
Regarding the incident, Suarez said:
"The No. 24 car (William Byron) put us in that position; he pushed me out of the way. I had a few laps older tires than everyone else. But overall, we have to keep working. This weekend, overall, wasn’t great. We came from the back several times. We had a fast car, but we made bad adjustments. It just wasn’t a clean weekend.”
Daniel Suarez started 11th on Saturday night, thanks to a random draw. However, he fell back to 32nd by the end of the first stage. Saurez recovered to finish 20th in the second stage but was taken out of the race on lap 387 when Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher made contact. This led to a massive pileup that eventually collected Suarez.
It was difficult to watch Trackhouse Racing fall short after such a promising performance at Bristol last week, but no team is immune from a freak accident. On a positive note, Trackhouse Racing and Suarez have shown a lot of strength on short tracks, possibly giving them an advantage at Richmond.
