Daniel Suárez leaving Trackhouse Racing at end of NASCAR season

Alex Zietlow, The Charlotte Observer on Jul 1, 2025

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Daniel Suárez is a free agent.

The driver of the No. 99 Cup car will leave Trackhouse Racing at the conclusion of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, the team announced Tuesday.

The decision is a mutual one, according to the team and Suárez himself. He will continue to compete for Trackhouse in the interim as the team works to win more races and earn a playoff berth.

“Trackhouse and I have mutually agreed to part ways at the end of the 2025 season,” Suárez wrote in a social media post. “I’ve had some of the best years of my Cup Series career at Trackhouse. We had great successes as a team, and I gained some incredible friends. We took a team nobody had even hard of in 2021, and in just a couple of years, we were winning races and running up front on a weekly basis.”

Suárez continued: “Just like the seasons in a year, sometimes things change, and we have agreed to each go in our own direction. I wish Trackhouse nothing but the best. This 99 team will always be special to me.”

If you’re even a casual fan of NASCAR, you’ve probably heard of Suárez — whether it be for his racing acumen, or the fact that the somebrero-wearing, wide-smiling driver’s personality shines everywhere he goes.

The 33-year-old driver is in his ninth season at the Cup level and his fifth with Trackhouse, a team co-owned by Justin Marks and global music star Pitbull. Suárez became the first Mexican-born driver to win a Cup race when he did so at Sonoma Raceway in 2022. He’s won one more Cup race since then — the February 2024 race at Atlanta.

Suárez has largely struggled in 2025. He is 29th in points — 332 behind the leader — and only has three Top 10s and one Top 5 through 18 races.

That isn’t congruent with the two other teams under the Trackhouse umbrella in 2025. Ross Chastain, a regular contender in the Cup Series, took the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway earlier this year. And even Shane van Gisbergen found a way to salvage a difficult season with a win at the inaugural Cup Series race in Mexico City earlier this summer.

Still, Suárez was the first driver hired by Trackhouse, which was established in 2020 and ran its first full Cup season in 2021. That’s not something Trackhouse will forget.

“The role Daniel has played in the Trackhouse origin story and its first five years will remain a valued part of the company’s history forever,” Marks wrote in a statement. “His commitment, work ethic and dedication to the effort is one of the most impressive things I personally have seen in my career.

“We will forever be thankful and honored that Daniel chose to spend many incredible years with us. We are proud of his wins, his successes, the growth of his brand, and his emergence as a valuable athlete in America’s greatest motorsport. But, most of all, I’m proud of him as a friend.”