CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Daniel Suárez, the only Mexican driver in NASCAR’s top category, has been announced as the replacement for Justin Haley at Spire Motorsports. Suárez, who was the first driver hired by Trackhouse Racing in 2021, will be replaced after five seasons by 19-year-old Connor Zilisch next year.
Suárez hasn’t won any races this year and was left out of the 16-driver playoffs, while Haley is 31st in the Cup standings, with only two top-ten finishes. Haley achieved Spire’s only Cup victory in history at Daytona International Speedway in July 2019.We believe that both Suárez and the No. 7 Chevrolet team have the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to compete weekly.
Jeff Dickerson, Co-owner of Spire
Suárez won both Cup career races with Trackhouse and finished 10th in the 2022 standings. Spire will be the fifth team in 10 years for the 2016 Xfinity Series champion. This year, he ranks 28th in the standings, with two top-five finishes and seven top-ten finishes. Suárez mentioned that Dickerson was one of the first people he called when he found out he wouldn’t be staying at Trackhouse. Dan Towriss, CEO of TWG Motorsports, became the majority shareholder of Spire this year, as the NASCAR team was added to a racing portfolio that also owns the Cadillac F1 team, which will launch next season, as well as Andretti Global in IndyCar.I think we need each other. We all love redemption stories and giving people a platform to prove the doubters wrong. Daniel needs to prove that this year was an exception, and we want to prove that the performance of car 7 this year was also an exception.
Jeff Dickerson, Co-owner of Spire
Spire has three Cup cars: Michael McDowell is 21st in points, Carson Hocevar 23rd, and Haley. The team has achieved three poles, six top-five finishes, 16 top-ten finishes, and led 233 laps, season highs for an organization that began competing in 2019. Freeway Insurance, an insurance broker and distributor, will be Suárez’s main sponsor. Suárez will now be under the same umbrella as his Mexican compatriot Sergio Pérez, who will join Valtteri Bottas as the first two Cadillac drivers. Suárez and Pérez usually have significant sponsorship from Mexican entities, but Dickerson said they were not a package for TWG.If you look at the last three years of Spire Motorsports’ growth, three years ago I probably wasn’t considering Spire Motorsports as an option. I think this is the fastest growing team in NASCAR, and I want to be a part of that. I know they’re not even close to being done. They’re just getting started.
Daniel Suárez
There was no decree. We are a sales-based organization, right? So it’s like, ‘OK, if Checo goes to the F1 car, then, you know, we have the opportunity to take advantage of a passionate fanbase’, and things come together. But you don’t know how it’s going to be, right?
Jeff Dickerson, Co-owner of Spire
We dragged this out a bit, because we were hoping for a bit of spark with Justin, and you finally get to a point where you say: ‘Man, I don’t know if we’re doing him any good, and I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any good.’ By that time, Checo had already been announced.
