Justin Marks shares a special bond with Daniel Suarez that runs deeper than the run-of-the-mill connection between a team owner and a driver. Suarez was the first person that Marks asked to drive for him when he decided to start a race team in the NASCAR Cup Series. Nearly four and a half years and the creation of a powerhouse organization later, their journey together is approaching an end.
Advertisement
The team revealed last week that it would not renew its contract with Suarez beyond 2025. Negotiations had been ongoing for the past several weeks, and they all seemed to have failed in the wake of poor performances from the No. 99 team.
Marks spoke to the press about his decision during the visit to Chicago and detailed the thought process that led to it. He said, “Daniel has been a huge part of this company for four and a half years now.
“When we sat down and mapped out our three-year and our five-year plan, and the sponsorships and everything we’re trying to accomplish over the next five years with the company, we just got to a point where we felt like that relationship had borne a lot of fruit for us. But it was time to move on.”
Despite the split, there aren’t any hard feelings between them. Marks revealed that they’d spent more than an hour discussing things at their hotel lobby in Chicago and reminisced on their time together. The timing of the decision, too, was chosen to provide Suarez with enough space to look for his next opportunity. He assured that the team would try to help him find a new home.
Suarez’s heartfelt message to Trackhouse Racing
Creating a race team from scratch and turning it into a growing force on the grid in such a short period is no ordinary task by any means. Suarez’s role in this cannot be underplayed. In his official statement that came after the split was announced, he looked back at what he’d achieved with Trackhouse Racing and felt a burst of emotions.
Suarez’s words read, “We took a team nobody had even heard of in 2021, and in just a couple of years, we were winning races and running up front on a weekly basis. Just like the seasons in a year, sometimes things change, and we have mutually agreed to each go in our own direction.”
By no means is he bowing out with a heavy heart. He put it rather beautifully when speaking on SiriusXM and said, “This is not sad. This is just a new chapter. That’s all it is.” Perhaps the best is yet to come for both Suarez and Trackhouse.
