Joins Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt with 7 Cup Series Championships

November 19, 2016

By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Daniel Suárez has always been a quick study—of necessity.

When the newest NASCAR XFINITY Series champion, and the first born outside the United States, moved from his native Mexico to become a driver in NASCAR’s national touring series, his command of the English language was rudimentary, to say the least.

But Suárez learned quickly, primarily from American television programming.

Similarly, Suárez has been a voracious consumer of racing knowledge, and he has had ample resources upon which to draw. As he has come to unfamiliar race tracks, Suárez has relied on extensive conversations with two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers, Championship 4 contenders Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch, who work under the same roof with him at Joe Gibbs Racing.

But knowledge is of little value if you can’t put it into practice, and that’s what Suárez did on Saturday evening, flying past Elliott Sadler moments after a restart with three laps left in the Ford EcoBoost 300, the race that decided the XFINITY championship in that series’ inaugural Chase.

Suárez’s dramatic victory represents a de facto broadening of the scope of NASCAR racing. Approximately 23 percent of social media responses to Saturday’s race were in Spanish.

With the championship, Suárez also became the first Toyota driver other than Busch to win a title in the series.

Part of Suárez’s learning process was knowing where to go for information. When he needed to improve his restarts, he went to the master.

“Someone that I really want to thank, as well, is Ron Hornaday,” Suárez said. “He helped me early in this year on my restarts. I was horrible at it. I was the worst ever out there on my restarts. One day I got the opportunity to talk to him.

“I went to his house. He started teaching me some good advice, and after that I really felt like I was a different driver, and tonight, we won a championship and a race because of restarts. I want to thank Ron Hornaday big time for all his help.”

When he felt he needed additional preparation for the Championship 4 race at Homestead, Suárez opted to run the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series finale the night before. Before Saturday’s race, he shared what he learned with crew chief Scott Graves.

“Actually it did help me to race the truck race,” Suárez said. “That was one of the races for sure I wanted to do, but I knew that I was going to be tired. I went to bed last night at 12:30 in the morning, and it was pretty late, and then I had to wake up at 7:30.

“So I didn’t have a lot of hours of sleep, but I had some good information, some good information that I shared with my crew chief, Scott, and with the guys, with my engineers, and I feel like that information helped us for tonight’s race. Definitely was something good.”

When he felt that his career had stalled as he tried to work his way through the ranks of stock car racing on his own, Suárez signed on to NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program and persevered.

‘Listen, five years ago when I moved to the U.S. for the very first time, I tried to do everything by myself,” Suárez said. “I had a couple of sponsors from Mexico, and really I wanted to race and to be successful, and I went to the K&N Series, and I didn’t speak English, and I tried to do it by myself, and it just didn’t work out.

“I was learning English but I wasn’t going anywhere. I was very, very close to going back to Mexico, to my country, because I just didn’t feel like I was good enough. The second year, I gave myself another shot with the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program. The first year was a lot about adaptation, a lot of keep learning English, and by the second part of the year, we were winning races. We finished top three like seven times in a row, and we finished third in the championship. Everything started to get much, much better.”

And on Saturday evening, it got better still—so much so that Suárez moved significantly closer to his dream of racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

“Well, at the end of the day, that’s the goal, to move with the big guys and to learn from the big guys,” Suárez said. “XFINITY obviously is a great series where you get to race with some of the big guys and most of the time with the most important drivers from Cup, but you never race with all of them.

“So I’m pretty sure that the Cup car is going to be different, and to race with all those guys at the same time is going to be even more difficult. But who knows? We have to, like I said before, in the last months and early today, we have to focus on today—and tomorrow is going to take care of itself.”

–30–

Johnny Sauter Wins 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Championship
Captures First Title In Eighth Season Of Competition

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (Nov. 18, 2016) – After eight full-time seasons of racing in the rough-and-tumble circuit, Johnny Sauter earned his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Sauter finished third on Friday night, outdueling fellow Championship 4 competitors Matt Crafton (seventh), Christopher Bell (eighth) and Timothy Peters (ninth) at the South Florida track.

This season, Sauter matched his career high in wins with three (2013) and set a personal best in
single-season top 10s with 19. Sauter’s 13 career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victories tie him for 11th most all-time in series history.

The driver of the No. 21 GMS Racing Chevrolet started his 2016 campaign with a bang – capturing his second career win at Daytona International Speedway and becoming the first driver to clinch a berth in the inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Chase.

Once in the Chase, Sauter breezed through the Round of 8 with three consecutive top 10s. The veteran stole the show in the Round of 6, winning back-to-back races at Martinsville Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway and following those up with a runner-up at Phoenix International Raceway to set the stage for his championship-clinching performance at Homestead.

Sauter’s previous-best championship finish was a runner-up in 2011 with ThorSport Racing.

Also on Friday, William Byron won his seventh race of the season, capturing the series owner championship for the No. 9 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota.

Byron also was named the winner of the Sunoco Rookie of the Year Award. Along with his seven victories, Byron tallied 11 top fives and 16 top 10s.

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Qualifying – Ford EcoBoost 400
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Homestead, Florida
Friday, November 18, 2016

1. (4) Kevin Harvick, Chevrolet, 177.637 mph.
2. (2) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 177.538 mph.
3. (31) Ryan Newman, Chevrolet, 177.387 mph.
4. (11) Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 177.194 mph.
5. (24) Chase Elliott #, Chevrolet, 177.096 mph.
6. (78) Martin Truex Jr., Toyota, 176.974 mph.
7. (20) Matt Kenseth, Toyota, 176.505 mph.
8. (21) Ryan Blaney #, Ford, 176.413 mph.
9. (18) Kyle Busch (C), Toyota, 175.959 mph.
10. (19) Carl Edwards (C), Toyota, 175.615 mph.
11. (14) Tony Stewart, Chevrolet, 174.978 mph.
12. (47) AJ Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 174.831 mph.
13. (22) Joey Logano (C), Ford, 176.638 mph.
14. (48) Jimmie Johnson (C), Chevrolet, 176.269 mph.
15. (1) Jamie McMurray, Chevrolet, 176.263 mph.
16. (41) Kurt Busch, Chevrolet, 176.246 mph.
17. (3) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 176.120 mph.
18. (17) Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ford, 175.965 mph.
19. (88) Alex Bowman(i), Chevrolet, 175.655 mph.
20. (6) Trevor Bayne, Ford, 175.536 mph.
21. (16) Greg Biffle, Ford, 175.018 mph.
22. (44) Brian Scott #, Ford, 174.984 mph.
23. (13) Casey Mears, Chevrolet, 174.972 mph.
24. (42) Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 173.756 mph.
25. (43) Aric Almirola, Ford, 175.092 mph.
26. (59) Michael McDowell, Chevrolet, 174.972 mph.
27. (34) Chris Buescher #, Ford, 174.967 mph.
28. (27) Paul Menard, Chevrolet, 174.893 mph.
29. (5) Kasey Kahne, Chevrolet, 174.695 mph.
30. (10) Danica Patrick, Chevrolet, 174.667 mph.
31. (49) Matt DiBenedetto(i), Toyota, 174.306 mph.
32. (38) Landon Cassill, Ford, 174.025 mph.
33. (15) Clint Bowyer, Chevrolet, 173.952 mph.
34. (95) Ty Dillon(i), Chevrolet, 173.796 mph.
35. (7) Regan Smith, Chevrolet, 173.706 mph.
36. (23) David Ragan, Toyota, 172.529 mph.
37. (55) Reed Sorenson, Toyota, 170.578 mph.
38. (83) Jeffrey Earnhardt #, Toyota, 168.687 mph.
39. (32) Dylan Lupton(i), Ford, 166.036 mph.
40. (46) Michael Annett, Chevrolet, 165.853 mph.

1 drivers failed to qualify.

41. (30) Gray Gaulding, Chevrolet, 168.935 mph.

–30–

November 18, 2016

By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Jimmie Johnson’s rueful rhetorical question told the story of Friday’s knockout qualifying session at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“What’s a championship race without a little drama?” Johnson asked after earning the 14th starting position during a session fraught with difficulty for the No. 48 team.

Kevin Harvick, who was eliminated from the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup last Sunday at Phoenix, won the pole for Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 Championship 4 race (on NBC at 2:30 p.m. ET), touring the 1.5-mile track in 30.399 seconds (177.637 mph) during the money round.

The four drivers who will race for the championship, on the other hand, will start in close proximity. Kyle Busch qualified ninth, followed by Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards. Joey Logano and Johnson will start side-by-side in 13th and 14th, after Logano was bumped out of the final round by Tony Stewart, who will retire from NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing after Sunday’s event.

“Yeah, I told Jimmie, ‘Man, we all suck,’” Logano quipped. “I don’t know what happened. It’s interesting that we’re all starting so close to each other and not towards the front. It’s not what you would expect coming here.

“I’m sure none of us are going to stay back there very long. When this race starts, we’ll all have to move up forward and possibly have to win this race. It has come down to that the last few years and I would expect the same once again.”

It took a heroic effort on Johnson’s part to advance past the first round. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet went out early in the opening round and came away with a disappointing lap. When Johnson tried to improve from 29th fastest near the end of the 20-minute round, Landon Cassill spun in front of Johnson, and the attempt was halted by caution.

On his third attempt, which began with roughly 20 seconds left in the round, Johnson made the second round in 22nd position. Considering the trouble in round one, qualifying 14th was almost a victory for the six-time champion, who will attempt to claim a record-tying seventh title on Sunday.

“Unfortunately, that first outing we just didn’t get a good lap,” Johnson said. “Then I was on a great lap and the caution came out, so we ended up with an additional lap on our tires. We had a nice pickup there for five or six laps on our tires, whatever it was and ended up 14th.

“A bit unlucky, and we kind of hurt ourselves that opening run, and I think to end up 14th on the age of those tires is respectable. Qualifying isn’t my strong suit. I’m much better at racing, so let’s line them up and go racing.”

Busch was philosophical about his starting spot.

“Yeah, it wasn’t certainly the run that we were looking for,” he said. “We were wanting to see a little bit better than that, but we were just too free during qualifying. We just kind of missed the balance a little bit and didn’t quite have the confidence that I needed within the car to get more out of it.

“But it was a decent qualifying effort, I guess, if you consider the big picture of where we’re all at. We’re all pretty tight. Throw a blanket over each other–we’re all right there. At least one camera can probably catch us all when we turn off into Turn 1.

With his second Coors Light Pole Award of the season and the 17th of his career, Harvick wouldn’t mind upstaging the drivers competing for the series title.

“Well, I think for us it’s really the same as it has been,” Harvick said. “You know, you prepare and do all the same things. We’ve done everything the same. Obviously, there’s not as much pressure coming into the weekend as there normally would be, and a lot less to do, so that’s a good thing.

“So yeah, it would be nice to win a race and close the season out. Just a lot of reasons–Tony’s last race, last race with Chevrolet (before Stewart-Haas switches to Ford next year). So, yeah, came here to try to win, same as everybody else. No participation trophies.”

Brad Keselowski qualified second to Harvick at 177.538 mph. Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin will start third and fourth, respectively.