1. Daniel Suarez Stood His Ground
Daniel Suarez has been on quite a revenge tour against his former team so far this season.
After ruffling feathers with Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen in the Cook Out Clash at Bowman-Gray Stadium and dueling with Connor Zilisch at Circuit of the Americas, it was seemingly only a matter of time until he got to Ross Chastain. That came at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday (March 15), and this time, it might not have been his fault.
Some banging on the cooldown lap led to a confrontation on pit road between the two. Chastain refused to comment to the media on the story, while Suarez had some choice words for the watermelon farmer.
Then, to prove he wasn’t just in the heat of the moment, Trackhouse’s very first driver then jumped on his personal vlog to double down on his quote of driver No. 1 at Trackhouse being two-faced.
“I have known Ross for a long time,” Suarez says near the end. “I have always known him and I were very different. We’re pretty different kinds of people. But that’s okay, I have a lot of respect for him.
“But the kind of words he said after the race were just completely unacceptable. That’s chicken stuff. I lost a lot of respect for him as a person. It was not a good look for him, the kind of person he is. It was just a little bit sad. I was getting fired up to fight, but what was I going to gain? There is nothing to gain with that. He’s not the kind of person I really want to fight. Just disappointed. He’s the kind of [person] that can’t control himself.”
Chastain still has not publicly commented on the situation.
The drawback for Suarez stirring the cauldron as much as he has this season is that it’s masking how good a year the numbers say he has had.
He’s currently 17th in points, tied with van Gisbergen for the final spot in the Chase. This is a 12-place improvement from where he was with Trackhouse last season and 14 places above where Justin Haley had the same car last season.
Suarez’s replacement, Zilisch, has had a rough first month of Cup racing. He’s dead last in points among full-time drivers, and his average finish is over seven spots lower than Suarez’s last year.
2. Where Have the Wood Brothers Been?
When NASCAR first introduced the charter system at the beginning of 2016, the oldest team in the Cup Series was left out of the offering.
Wood Brothers Racing has existed in some form since 1950. Its first Cup races came in 1953. After skipping 1954, WBR has since fielded a car in at least one Cup race in every single season since 1955. The 2016 season was its 62nd consecutive season.
But NASCAR awarded charters to the 36 cars that had attempted to qualify for every single race from 2013 to 2015. The No. 21 Ford had gone part-time in 2009 and was only just returning to full-time competition in 2016.
Yet the future was bright for WBR, as it had just entered a technical alliance with the much larger Team Penske the year prior. Young Ryan Blaney, a Penske prospect, competed full-time for them in that 2016 season.
Fast forward 10 years later. The Wood Brothers have won three races in the last decade, but there are clear cracks in the foundations of this legendary team.
Much has been made about Kyle Busch and other drivers struggling to adapt to the current Cup car. On an organizational level, no team has struggled more to adapt than the Wood Brothers.
| Season | Driver | Average Finish |
| 2018 | Paul Menard | 19.4 |
| 2019 | Paul Menard | 16.6 |
| 2020 | Matt DiBenedetto | 14.8 |
| 2021 | Matt DiBenedetto | 16.9 |
| 2022 | Harrison Burton | 22.8 |
| 2023 | Harrison Burton | 24.7 |
| 2024 | Harrison Burton | 25.7 |
| 2025 | Josh Berry | 21.7 |
As the chart illustrates, the No. 21 Ford has fallen off quite a bit in the last four seasons, right when the new car came out.
This was also when the Wood Brothers dropped Matt DiBenedetto in favor of Harrison Burton, whose 2024 season resulted in the lowest average finish for the team in a year since Trevor Bayne in 2014.
But while last year saw a four-position gain by Josh Berry and the team’s 101st win, it was still a relative struggle. The team finished 29th in average finish among the 36 full-time teams. That early win locked them into the playoffs and really masked how off they were throughout the season.
It really came into focus this past weekend, the anniversary of that win at Las Vegas. This year, Berry finished three laps down as the three Penske cars, while not showing much speed on the day, at least finished on the lead lap.
3. What will come next for the No. 21?
The team dynamics at play between the Wood Brothers and Penske are interesting to watch. The No. 21 Ford has essentially served as the B team for Penske for years now.
It has been rumored for a while that Carson Kvapil is under some form of Penske development deal. Berry has proven repeatedly to be a very solid driver and would be the clear-cut best choice for the next few seasons in the No. 21.
But Berry is not the best option for Penske in the long run. The better option for 2027 would be to see what Kvapil has and to use the Woods to develop him as they did with Blaney.
Obviously, there are no reports of this happening, nor has there even been a hint of it yet, but it’s also not like the team is having the results right now to justify keeping Berry in the car. If Kvapil were announced for this seat or even hinted at it in the forthcoming silly season, that would say a lot about just how much influence Penske has on the No. 21 moving forward.
4. The Past of Throwbacks Might Be The Future
This coming week used to be the official throwback week of NASCAR, coinciding with the spring race at Darlington Raceway.
Alternate paint schemes in general really didn’t begin in full force until Dale Earnhardt’s famous silver car in the 1995 All-Star Race. Once they did, it didn’t take long for throwbacks to come into play.
In 1997, to celebrate his 25th Cup season, Darrell Waltrip ran a number of different paint schemes to call back to various points in his career. Then, in 1998, Waltrip drove what I believe was the very first throwback tribute to another driver.
Tim Flock had made the NASCAR 50-year anniversary ceremony that year at the Daytona 500, but his health quickly fell apart in the next month. A week before he passed away, Waltrip ran a paint scheme in the spring Darlington race honoring Flock’s legendary 1955 championship season and raising money for his family.
After that, throwbacks were an occasional occurrence until 2015, when many teams decided to run one in honor of the Southern 500’s return to Labor Day weekend. NASCAR later officially designated the race as a throwback weekend, with teams directly encouraged to run one.
I don’t think there was ever a season in which everybody participated in the festivity. A lot of it comes down to sponsors, who either don’t want to run a throwback or won’t approve anything but the most bare-bones attempts. The concept itself has also been running on fumes recently.
It might be better for everybody if, for now, NASCAR has made throwbacks more organic again, instead of effectively shaming teams that can’t run one. Waltrip wasn’t told to run his Flock car; he just did it.
5. Is That First Win (Finally) Coming Soon?
One driver to keep an eye on for the next while might be Ty Gibbs. He’s the only driver to finish in the top five in the last three races, the first three after the two superspeedways to start the season.
One thing is clear with Joe Gibbs Racing at this point: one of the organization’s highest priorities has to be to get Gibbs that first Cup win. It has been a long wait for it, as Darlington will mark his 129th start.
It’s not unheard of for a driver to take this long to get their first win, but he’s definitely shown to have week-to-week speed this year. It could come at any venue.
Michael has watched NASCAR for over 25 years and has covered it on-and-off for 14.
In addition to Frontstretch he also writes sporadically for his own websites GrandPrixFocus.com and StockCarFocus.com.
Suarez “ruffles feathers ” because he is Mexican, plain and simple. Remember when NASCAR said their fans were racists and those fans overwhelmingly AGREED? SVG upsets fans and the TV twins Harvick and Bowyer because he is from New Zealand. Both Suarez and SVG have been very gracious, great ambassadors for the sport and are exactly what NASCAR wanted when they set out to expand the sport. Most common complaint from fans on why SVG is the most hated driver in NASCAR? It’s not fair, he knows what he’s doing.
1.) Don’t forget about Suarez at Phoenix, not slowing down and crashing right into Chastain after he had already crashed. I’m sure that didn’t help his cause this weekend either.
3.) Why is Berry not the best option? I don’t see Kvapil setting the world on fire in O’Reilly. Why would he be better? I think WBR would regret very much if they let Berry go. He’s competitive, (and even has won) when he gets good cars under him.
4.) If I’m not mistaken, the throwbacks were on Labor Day weekend’s race, not the spring race. And yes, as expected, it has run its course. Time to tone it back to once every few years at the very least.
5.) Interesting how a fire has been lit under Gibbs the Gabehart comments. Coincidence? I think not!
So I wonder why Ty Gibbs has suddenly “found something” and is running better. We know Chris Gabehart is good because he did so well with Denny Hamlin. Maybe they just didn’t click together.
Oh I know, NASCAR is helping the Toyotas cheat this year after the lawsuit.
Throwback themes are getting old and stale.
Ty Gibbs is coming, no doubt about it.
Chase Briscoe needs to catch a break; he’s a lot better than his standings at the moment.
chase briscoe has inherited truex’s bad luck.