In what has been a relatively quiet silly season for the NASCAR Cup Series’ 2026 season, one of the few question marks was where Daniel Suarez would end up after it was announced in August that Connor Zilisch would be taking his Cup seat at Trackhouse Racing effective next year.
Two months later we have the answer, as Suarez will replace the departing Justin Haley and drive Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 car full-time for 2026.
While his deal with Spire looks to be for 2026 only, team owner Jeff Dickerson said that the team and Suarez, “have a path forward for multiple years, for sure.”
Suarez turns 34 in January, and he’ll be leaving the team he called home for half a decade. Spire will be the fifth Cup team he’s raced for, and 2026 will be his 10th full-time season at NASCAR’s highest level.
Now at a turning point in his career, is Spire the right decision for Suarez and his best home for 2026 and beyond?
Spire Is the Best Choice
Suarez joining Spire Motorsports for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season was the best thing that could’ve happened for his Cup Series career.
The move to Spire represents a chance at another fresh start for Suarez, who’s been a part of four other teams in his Cup Series career. After bouncing between Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing and Gaunt Brothers Racing in the first four years of his career, Suarez finally seemed to have found a true home at Trackhouse, with two wins and two playoff appearances between 2022 and 2024.
The 2025 season at Trackhouse hasn’t been a success performance wise for Suarez, however, with only two top fives and seven top 10s through 34 races.
He is far removed from his memorable three-wide photo finish win at EchoPark Speedway 68 races ago, as he’s dropped to 28th in the driver standings in 2025.
Meanwhile, Trackhouse teammates Ross Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen both visited victory lane and qualified for the playoffs this season.
With the struggles his team have faced throughout the entire 2025 season, it seems like Suarez’s career has been in need of a change of scenery to remain relevant in today’s field of Cup Series drivers. Spire Motorsports, a team on the rise in the Cup Series, presents Suarez the opportunity to compete in cars that have run up front and competed for victories on several occasions this year.
Michael McDowell nearly upset the playoff picture by leading in the waning laps at Texas earlier this season before crashing late. Carson Hocevar nearly won at EchoPark Speedway in the second week of the season. He backed that performance up with a strong run at the Coca-Cola 600, and he even had a chance at winning at his home state of Michigan before tire and mechanical issues prevented Hocevar from capitalizing on the raw speed his cars had.
Spire has been on the rise in recent years, and Suarez’s arrival will only benefit the team as a whole moving forward. McDowell, the team’s longest tenured driver, will lean on Suarez’s past success on road courses to take the next step to turn top-five runs into race wins in the near future. Hocevar has arguably been the best on the intermediate tracks, and he can help Suarez score better results and give him useful tips.
Despite bouncing around in his first few years as a Cup driver, Suarez provided Trackhouse with stability when the team first came into the sport in 2021. After several up and down seasons with the team, joining the ranks of Spire Motorsports represents the chance for Suarez to help make more of a name for himself in the NASCAR Cup Series. – Christopher Hansen
Spire Keeps Suarez in Cup, But His Best Opportunities Lie in the O’Reilly Series
If the goal for Suarez is to stay in the Cup Series, Spire is his best — and likely his only — opportunity at doing so.
But Spire is by no means an ideal situation, as the team expanded and took a step back in 2025.
Its Craftsman Truck Series team expanded from three to four trucks for 2025, but results were hit-or-miss and resources were spread thin to where the team elected to shutter its No. 07 truck and returned to a three-team truck for the playoffs.
On the Cup side, Hocevar has shown more speed, but the No. 77 team has suffered a plethora of reliability and consistency issues with four mechanical DNFs and 15 finishes of 29th or worse. McDowell has been competitive on the road courses, but he’s taken a step back at superspeedways and only has two top 10s on non-superspeedway ovals. Haley has only two top 10s period, and he’s now the second consecutive driver of the No. 7 car to be shown the door by the end of the year.
In other words, Spire has suffered expansion woes.
Hocevar is poised to become the leader of the team (if he hasn’t already) and McDowell has performed better than Suarez on road courses and superspeedways in the last few years. Combine all that with Suarez stepping into the organization’s worst-performing car, and 2026 has the potential to either go off without a hitch or go completely off the rails.
If the 2026 season doesn’t go well, where does that put Suarez, both in the future of Spire and as a potential free agent?
In order for Suarez to put himself in the best possible position going forward, he should make as many starts as he can in the soon-to-be-renamed O’Reilly Auto Parts Series next season.
The former series champion made a one-off start with JR Motorsports at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in June, and in that one start, he drove from last to first in a backup car to win in his home country.
It was one of the most important moments in Suarez’s career, and it gave him an unforgettable highlight in what has otherwise been a miserable year.
Suarez’s Trackhouse teammates Chastain and van Gisbergen also competed in the same part-time JRM car to great success this year, and Suarez certainly has the sponsorship available to make part-time starts with JRM or another Chevy team in O’Reilly if he desires.
He’d easily be a contender for wins in a competitive O’Reilly ride, and that would only raise his stock as a driver, regardless of how his 2026 Cup season plays out. He has five allocated starts to use (potentially more if NASCAR reduces the limits on Cup drivers), and he should make the most of them. – Stephen Stumpf
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
