WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Daniel Suarez’s car sat in its pit stall for an excruciating 24 seconds last weekend at Indianapolis, all but ending his chances to win and keeping him outside a playoff spot.
He enters today’s race at Watkins Glen International 28 points behind Bubba Wallace for the final playoff spot. While Wallace struggles on road courses, these types of tracks are a strength for Suarez.
Provided there isn’t a new winner locking up a playoff spot, the duel between Wallace and Suarez could highlight today’s race (3 p.m. ET on USA Network).
Wallace will have a slight advantage at the start. He qualified 12th. Suarez qualified 14th — the first time he’s started outside the top 10 at a road course this season.
Suarez and his team spent time this week dissecting their fateful pit stop and discussing how the No. 99 team can do a better job executing on and off pit road.
“Probably the longest meeting I’ve ever had with a pit crew,” Suarez said Saturday at Watkins Glen. “We had a lot of conversations, a lot of reviews of film and we worked together for a couple hours, at least. Just watching film — reviewing what I could have done different.”
Suarez was in the top three with eventual winner Michael McDowell and eventual runner-up Chase Elliott before the slow pit stop. The front tire changer’s air hose got stuck under the left front tire. That kept the tire changer from going to the right side and forced the jackman to return to the left side to jack the car.
“There are so many different things that went wrong,” Suarez said of the pit stop. “The first one was the throw of the hose was too short. The second one was I was a couple of feet too long, and that made the short hose even shorter.
“The third one was I knew that he was stuck, so I could have put it in reverse, but then the right rear (changer), he already took the nut out, so I couldn’t put it in reverse because I didn’t have a wheel on the right rear. So if he knew the left front is stuck, why are you going to take the right rear nut, you know? You don’t have to be that far ahead.
“The carrier and the changer — they’re seeing the hose underneath with a loop because the hose had like a weird loop. That never happens, but it had like a loop. They saw it, but they didn’t move it. So there are like seven different people on our team, including myself, that could have done something to avoid it.
“And then on top of this, we were going to wait for fuel. We didn’t need a nine-second stop. We just needed an OK stop because we were going to wait for fuel. It’s one of those things that we just have to be smarter.”
Lessons learned and time to move forward for Suarez and the No. 99 team.
“I can tell you that my pit crew, they’re hungry,” Suarez said. “I’m hungry. My engineers are hungry. So right now, I feel like we’re in a very, very good place to continue to fight.”
Suarez gained 32 points on Wallace last week at Indianapolis by finishing third and scoring 17 stage points. Wallace finished 18th and had no stage points.
Wallace’s best finish on a road course is 17th, which happened at Sonoma.
“I’ve always said I enjoy road courses,” Wallace said. “It’s fun when you get there by yourself doing stuff different. It’s fun. But as soon as you put a stopwatch down and you have competition out there, now we’re back to completion and I suck. I’m slow. I think having a more positive mindset after it and not getting in the ‘you suck way’ is better.”
His goal today is simple.
“Just trying to have enough speed to make sure strategy calls are a little bit easier,” he said.
