Daniel Suárez on racing 'me vs. me,' his U.S. introduction and more: 12 Questions

In his first season with Spire Motorsports, Suárez talks about the pressure to perform after losing his spot at Trackhouse. David Jensen / Getty Images Share full articleEach week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Spire Motorsports driver Daniel Suárez, who is currently in a Chase for the Cup playoff position after the first seven races of the NASCAR season. The full interview is available on the 12 Questions Podcast. 1. Do you typically arrive for things early, late or on time, and why? I just like to be on time. Normally when I’m late, I give a heads-up in advance. To me, it’s a little bit of a lack of respect when you’re late and you don’t let anyone know, and you just show up. That’s just the way I am. 2. What is the pettiest thing that annoys you during a race weekend? It doesn’t annoy me, but the drivers’ meeting, in my opinion, has kind of run its course. It’s a waste of time, to be honest. Nobody’s watching the TV (where NASCAR plays the instructional rules video), nobody’s listening. If they want to do a meeting, let’s do a meeting. If they want to do a meet-and-greet with people, then meet-and-greet with people. Right now, it’s kind of half and half. (NASCAR competition head) Elton Sawyer, I love him, but he always says exactly the same thing (after the video plays). The drivers’ meeting is not really a “drivers’ meeting.” 3. What is something you’ve learned to stop explaining to people? (Laughs.) Sometimes it’s hard to win an argument with Julia (Piquet, his wife). I’ve learned to give up sooner. (Julia, listening nearby, shrugs in agreement.) Probably when we were dating earlier in our lives, I used to keep fighting and keep fighting to make sure I was proving my point. Eventually, I’ve learned to just let it be. She shrugged, so apparently she doesn’t disagree with that. 4. If you could go back to the early days before you reached NASCAR, what is one different decision you wish you had made? I wish I connected more with people I admired, like Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart — all these people. I feel like I never really did that. But it was also a challenge. I don’t know if I could have done anything different, because I couldn’t even communicate with them (Suárez did not speak English when he first arrived in the United States and had to teach himself). It was difficult in my position. I wish I had learned more from the great ones of the sport. I have good relationships with them now, but I wish I had it when I was a young kid and needed a lot of advice. 5. What is it like to be in a debrief after a bad race? It’s definitely not as much fun, but in my mind, those are the most productive ones. When you have a great race, you go into the debrief, you talk about a few things you can do better, how the car was, but everyone is in a good spirit. When things go bad, that’s when we need the most time to debrief, even though nobody really wants to do that. 6. I’m asking each person two wild-card questions: One about the past and one about the present. Regarding the past, when you first came to the United States, it wasn’t to Charlotte. That was later. Your first experience was in Buffalo, New York. What was that like for you? It was definitely an experience, especially for a kid coming from Mexico. A lot of snow. It was in January. I remember I watched the Daytona 500 from (race team owner) Troy (Williams’) house. I watched Trevor Bayne win that race from his house. I remember being super excited, because he was a rookie who wasn’t even full-time. I was like, “Man, if he can do that, I can do it too.” He actually motivated me a lot. Fast forward 10 years later, I became good friends with Trevor, we rode bicycles together, and I told him that story. He was super happy to hear that he inspired me. So I ended up in Buffalo, New York — long story — and I learned English quite a bit there because nobody spoke Spanish up there. It was cold. A few months later, I realized NASCAR was really in Charlotte, so I talked to my dad about it, and I went back to Mexico and eventually came to Charlotte. It was a journey. It was the most different experience I had at the time coming from Mexico. 7. In terms of the present, you’re off to a great start this season and your average finish has improved by four positions. In the media, we said you were racing for your career coming into this year. But did you feel that way, and is that motivation why your performance has been so much better? No, man. Sometimes media creates a narrative and a story, in a way. A few close people have asked me what changed, what I’m doing differently, and I swear, man, I’m not doing anything different. My process and work ethic are the same. A few things in the process changed, but not because of me — because of the team — so I had to adjust. Some things I like better, some things I’ve told them I liked better before. In reality, we’re just faster. The team is doing an amazing job, and we’re executing the weekend right. It’s not just about speed — it’s about adjustments from practice to qualifying to the race, communication, building those maps to have good adjustments. A lot of people don’t believe it, but it’s me vs. me. I’m not trying to beat (former team) Trackhouse or anyone else. I don’t care about them. It’s me vs. me. Right now, I’m at a point in my career where I have experience, I still have the youth, and I have to take advantage of that. 8. If you could get any driver’s helmet in the history of motorsports, whose would it be? It’s so hard to pick one. It has to be between Michael Schumacher, (Ayrton) Senna, Dale Earnhardt, Cale Yarborough — so many of them. I would say Nelson Piquet (his father-in-law), but I feel like we can get one of those, right? (Turns to Julia.) You have a couple, right? Julia: Maybe Max (Verstappen, who is married to her sister, Kelly)? Daniel: Well, that’s another one who I feel like we can do that. I’m talking kind of impossibles. 9. When things are not going well, do you prefer people leave you alone or check in on you? I prefer for people to leave me alone for a little bit, and then to check in. I’m very extroverted, so I do want to talk about things. A lot of people get quiet, and I don’t. But actually, the reason why I need five minutes is just to calm down. Just to get back to neutral, and then I can talk about it. If not, I feel like I’m shooting everywhere. 10. What is something about yourself that would surprise people who think they “know” you? I love plants. I’m a very green kind of person. I love plants, I love trees, gardening, things like that. My sister grows a lot of vegetables. Julia likes that kind of stuff too. One day I’d like to have a place where we grow our own stuff. Yesterday I spent like two hours with my landscaping guy because we’re going to change some plants, and I enjoy that so much. 11. What is something you laugh about now that was absolutely not funny at the time? My English. Right now, I make fun of my English from back then. I couldn’t talk to (Bubba) Wallace. I’ve known (Joey) Logano, (Ryan) Blaney, (Chase) Elliott, all these guys from when I didn’t speak English. I remember one time in Chicago at a NASCAR Next 9 (future stars) program, there was a big group of us. We were going to all these places, and I couldn’t talk to anyone. It was frustrating for me. Now it’s funny how much I have progressed, but at the time, it was like “Damn it.” 12. Each week, I ask the driver to give me a question for the next person. (The last one) was Jesse Love and he wanted to know: “What place would you like to see NASCAR race that we haven’t been to yet?” I would love to see us race in Brazil. I’m a little biased because I have a strong connection with Brazil (the Piquet family’s home country), but to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever seen race fans as passionate as I have in São Paulo. It’s unbelievable. The racing culture there is so big. I was there for a NASCAR Brazil race, and there were probably 50,000 or 60,000 people in the grandstands. It was unbelievable. I’d love to see the Cup Series there one day. Obviously, I want to come back to Mexico, but for somewhere we haven’t been, I’d say Brazil. Do you have a question for the next person? It’s Chase Elliott. I don’t come from a racing family. I don’t have an uncle or a dad or grandfather who was a racing driver. I feel like when you do have that, it can be a weight because you have that shadow. But Chase has done an amazing job doing his own thing and building his own career. So I’d like to know what kind of impact his dad (Bill Elliott) and family had. What kind of advice and support they gave him, especially from when he first started racing. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.