Daniel Suárez and the No. 41 Haas Automation Mustang team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) journey out to ISM Raceway near Phoenix for Sunday’s penultimate Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race of the season, the Bluegreen Vacations 500k. The Ford driver will pilot the red-and-black Haas Automation paint scheme for the remaining two races.
Suárez heads into the weekend after earning a third-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. The finish tied his best finish of the season achieved earlier this year at the same 1.5-mile oval. The 27-year-old also led 25 laps and earned three bonus points in Sunday’s 334-lap race.
The Mexico native has five Cup Series starts at Phoenix with two top-10 finishes, an average starting position of 21.2 and an average finishing position of 18.4, and he’s completed 1,345 of 1,562 possible laps.
In addition to his Cup Series starts at the mile oval in the Arizona desert, Suárez also has five NASCAR Xfinity Series starts. With the exception of an accident in his 2017 start, Suárez hasn’t finished outside the top-11 there in the series where he was the 2016 champion. Suárez also has two Phoenix starts in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series with a win in November 2016 and a fourth-place finish in November 2015.
Before Suárez made his way to the ranks of NASCAR’s premiere series, he entered the sport via NASCAR’s weekly and touring series. While driving in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West, he made three starts at Phoenix from 2011 to 2012 with best finishes of third in March 2012 and sixth in November 2011.
Haas Automation, founded in 1983 by SHR co-owner Gene Haas, is America’s leading builder of CNC machine tools. The company manufactures a complete line of vertical and horizontal machining centers, turning centers and rotary tables and indexers. All Haas products are constructed in the company’s 1.1-million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Oxnard, California, and distributed through a worldwide network of Haas Factory Outlets.
In Suárez’s last 10 Cup Series starts at tracks a mile or less in length, he has accumulated four top-10 finishes with 22 laps led and average starting and finishing positions of 18.6 and 16.8, respectively.
SHR has six victories along with 20 top-five finishes and 31 top-10s in 66 starts at the Phoenix track. The six victories are the most for SHR at any track.
With two races remaining, Suárez is 17th in the standings with 801 points and has four top-fives and 11 top-10s this season, along with 166 laps led. He has an average start of 14.1 and an average finish of 16.5. He earned his second career Cup Series pole, first with the No. 41 team, in July at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta.
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