Daniel Suarez must like to gamble. That’s what he did Sunday at Richmond. And it almost won him the jackpot. Richmond was the first time NASCAR gave teams different tire compounds in a points paying race. A Primary, harder, tire meant to last longer but isn’t as fast, and a softer Option tire, quicker but with a shorter life.
Suarez was the first to roll the dice, switching to Option tires. During the first Stage break he came in outside the top 15 and was the first driver to swap to the Option tires. When the green came back out, he launched like an Apollo rocket heading to the moon and after restarting 16th by lap 92 he shot past Christopher Bell –who won Stage 1– like the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was sitting at a highway rest stop.
Michael McDowell joined Suarez in the Option game, and he restarted even further back after a speeding penalty sent him to the rear of the field. By lap 105 Suarez had a three second lead over Bell and McDowell was 7th.
Suarez would go on to win Stage 2 handily.
But like all experiments, it didn’t last. When the green flag stops began on lap 122, both Bell and Suarez switched back to the Primary tires, and Bell found himself back in the lead, with Suarez hanging onto second. Other teams tried the Option tires too, but none of them got the same rocket-like results as Suarez and McDowell
In the end Suarez came up sort of the win but had a smile on his face after it was over.
“That was a fun race!” he said. “These option tires, if NASCAR and the fans didn’t like it, I don’t know what they would like because they were amazing. The strategy played a huge role in what everyone was doing; what we were doing and everyone’s different agenda.
“The guys did an amazing job with the strategy,” he added. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out at the end, but we gave it a shot and we ended up with a 10th place finish.”
Suarez added that being able to charge through the field early in the race was like a video game moment for him.
“It was like Mario Kart with a star,” he said.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.