Trackhouse Racing had made a breakthrough in 2022, its second year in the Cup Series. Ross Chastain joined the team and finished the season in second place with two wins, while their first driver, Daniel Suarez, wrapped up his sophomore year with the team in P10. However, they have lost momentum since then.
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Chastain slipped to P9 in the subsequent year and then to P19 last season. Suarez dropped to P19 in 2023 before rebounding slightly to P12 last year. This year, too, the two drivers haven’t had the best of starts to the campaign.
Suarez has recorded just one top-five and two top-10 finishes. Chastain has logged two top-fives and four top-10s. And, ahead of the Kansas race, Suarez acknowledged the team’s rough patch. He pointed out that other teams have simply found more speed, and that has left them playing catch-up.
Still, Suarez remained optimistic, saying their race-day performance has shown flashes of improvement.
“On Sunday[s] we are able to get better because we maximize things in our car. Last week in Texas, after all the fuel wreck, it’s tricky. Yes, we finished in the top 10, but really, how good we were, like, Ross finished second. I think he did an amazing job on every single restart in the last five,” Suarez reflected on the 11 starts of the season.
“But we still need speed, we don’t have speed. It’s not a secret. We are not where we need to be yet,” he added. For now, Suarez remains hopeful that the team is moving in the right direction and can continue to make gains, saying, “We can’t afford to be running like this for very long,” he added.
Suarez will roll off from P8 at Kansas — a relative step up in qualifying — while Chastain will have his work cut out, starting from the rear of the field in P26.
Chastain had recently addressed the team’s ongoing struggles in qualifying, stating that while they are aware of the issue, they haven’t found a solution yet.
“We are working, and I believe we will get that turned around. We’re still going to have off days on Saturday, but consistently, we just need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. It’s pretty dark on Saturday right now,” Chastain said.
So far, the team’s best qualifying performance came at the season’s only road course at COTA, where Suarez and Shane van Gisbergen started P5 and P6. Outside of that, all three Trackhouse drivers have consistently started at a disadvantage, often rolling off deep in the field at oval tracks.
It’s starting to become real” – @Daniel_SuarezG on preparing to race in Mexico City and more ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/j9onMkZjmE
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) May 11, 2025
Chastain’s average finish of 13.55 has kept him within arm’s reach of the top 10 in the regular season standings. However, with an average starting position of 23.5, he has been constantly forced to dig himself out of a hole.
Suarez hasn’t fared much better — his average finish is 19.7. And he starts, on average, from P25.9. Currently, Suarez is ranked 25th in the standings.
