Daniel Suarez, driver of the #18 ARRIS Toyota, stands in the garage before practice for the NASCAR XFINITY Series Lilly Diabetes 250 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 24, 2015 Photo – Jerry Markland/Getty Images
In the XFINITY Series, Lilly Diabetes 250 on Saturday afternoon, Daniel Suárez continued to impress spectators with his amazing talent. Having never competed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Suárez was able to bring home a third-place finish for his Joe Gibbs Racing team.
Suárez now carries a streak of three, top-five finishes over the past three races and continues to showcase his ability to compete for wins in a premier series of NASCAR. Many people did not predict the degree of success by Suárez or his contribution to organization at Joe Gibbs Racing this season along with his XFINITY Series teammate, Kyle Busch.
“I think the biggest part is it came from Joe Gibbs Racing because they keep me doing the right things,” says Suárez “It’s a lot of work out of the race track as well and I feel like that has been helping us a lot.
”This first part of the season, it’s been race tracks where it’s been my first time ever and all we can do is prepare as much as we can away from the race track, at the shop with information from my teammates. Kyle (Busch) has been super helpful. He’s been helping me a lot and I think that’s pretty much it. That’s how we’ve been getting better and better. I’m really looking forward to the second part of the season because I feel like we have been learning a lot and the second half, we will have a lot of information to use for the second half.”
Suárez’s third-place finish also comes with perks as he is now eligible for the XFINITY Series Dash4Cash program which will next be showcased at Bristol Motor Speedway in August. The Dash4Cash program, which has been around for a few years and rewards one of four regular XFINITY Series drivers running for points in the series, to compete against each other for a chance at $100,000. Suárez finished second earlier in this season at Bristol, the next Dash4Cash event.
”It’s great, it’s good,” said Suárez about the Dash4Cash program. “We’re very grateful to be a part of this
experience with NASCAR. Very happy because the next race for the Dash4Cash is in Bristol and I really like that place a lot. My first time (at Bristol) in the series, we came just a
little bit short of second-place . I’m really looking forward to that race to go back to Bristol. I’m very happy with
XFINITY for providing this program for the drivers who
race all season long in the series.”
Suárez now sets his sights on Iowa Speedway for next weekend’s XFINITY Series race. He is looking to continue his streak of top-five finishes at a track where he has previously finished 18th. Regardless of his previous finish, Suárez is optimistic about his chances of continuing his string of success next weekend at Iowa and feels that his finish in May is not a measure of his overall performance.
“Actually we ran pretty good at Iowa last time, we led a bunch of laps and were strong,” said Suárez ” I just feel like we weren’t that good on the second half of the race, but we led a lot of laps and gathered a lot of information for our race shop. I’m excited to come back. I feel like we can finally get our first win.”
Catch the next XFINITY Series race, the US Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway on August 1st at 8 pm ET on NBC Sports Network.
