Daniel Suarez came back from problems to score an eighth-place finish in the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway.
Suarez started the race leading the opening 49 laps from the pole and had one of the fastest cars in the field. That is until he experienced trouble in a tire issue compounded with a pit road speeding penalty.
But the Stewart-Haas Racing driver persevered and battled back to get inside the top 10 by the times the race ended.
“It was an eventful night for sure,” Suarez said. “We just had a fast race car but we got a bit tight. I feel like we made the car better but we never got the track position back. We had a tire going down and then I was speeding coming to pit road because I was wheel hopping because of the tire. It was one problem after another.
“We were fast enough to overcome that but not enough to get a better finish. I feel like the good thing is that we have the speed we just have to keep working to have a cleaner day and keep working to try to keep that speed the whole race.”
Suarez was disappointed that despite winning the pole he wasn’t able to gather any stage points. But he was also proud of being able to rebound from the earlier adversity.
“I feel like the first stage the call that we made on four tires instead of two tires kind of messed us up a little bit,” Suarez explained. “That is part of it. We made our bed on that. There was one caution after another and we couldn’t recover. After that we had the flat tire. It was just bad decisions and a little bad luck but we were able to overcome with a decent finish.”
