End of an era for Trackhouse Racing and Daniel Suárez

Trackhouse, the entity founded by former driver Justin Marks and rapper Pitbull, offered Daniel Suárez a qualified ride at the time of the last chance. In 2021, after several difficult seasons at the highest level of the NASCAR, the 2016 NASCAR Xfinity Series (second division) champion found himself at a crossroads. He then decided to trust a team that was completely new to the field, a year before the arrival of the seventh-generation car in the stock car championship.

Four years later, Trackhouse has three machines (Suárez's two teammates are Ross Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen), the Mexican has won his first two premier class victories, in Sonoma in 2022 and Atlanta in 2024, and Pitbull has been gone since mid-2024. This is perhaps one of the main reasons for Daniel Suárez's departure, announced on Tuesday.

"Trackhouse and I have mutually decided to part ways at the end of the 2025 season.", Suarez said. “I spent some of the best years of my Cup Series career at Trackhouse. We had great success as a team and I made some incredible friends. We took a team no one had heard of in 2021 and, within two years, we were winning races and finding ourselves at the front of the field every week. Just like seasons in a year, things change sometimes and we mutually decided to each go in our own direction. I wish Trackhouse all the best, this No. 99 team will always be special to me. And as I always say, the best is yet to come!”

It's hard to see where the Mexican might bounce back right now, but NASCAR's "silly season" is usually always hectic and filled with surprises. Trackhouse hasn't announced Suárez's replacement yet, but everything suggests the choice has already been made, and it wasn't very complicated!

Zilisch, a natural replacement?

Indeed, the structure of Justin Marks, also present in MotoGP as an Aprilia satellite team, has been nurturing 18-year-old Connor Zilisch since last year. The American is seen as one of NASCAR's future stars, and he is competing in the Xfinity Championship this year. He already has a strong track record in other disciplines, including victories at the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring in LMP2 last year, when he was only 17 years old. A few months later, he won at Watkins Glen in his first Xfinity race.

While Trackhouse is counting on Ross Chastain, second in the 2022 championship, to fight for the title throughout the year and on Shane van Gisbergen to perform well on road and street circuits, as evidenced by his victory in Mexico, Connor Zilisch could prove to be the perfect mix of genres, for a team that makes no secret of its ambitions, particularly after having bought the assets of Chip Ganassi Racing in 2022, which allowed the team to go from one to two full-time cars.

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