CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Daniel Suarez, the only Mexican driver at NASCAR’s top level, will replace Justin Haley at Spire Motorsports starting with the 2026 Cup Series season in a move announced Wednesday.
Previously announced was that Suarez, the first driver hired by Trackhouse Racing when it launched in 2021, is being replaced after five seasons by 19-year-old Connor Zilisch next year.
Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson said the pairing gives Suarez and the No. 7 Chevrolet team an opportunity to prove both are capable of being weekly contenders. Suarez has not won a Cup Series race this year and missed the 16-driver field for the playoffs, while Haley has the No. 7 car 31st in the season standings with just two top-10 finishes.
Haley scored the only Cup win in Spire history with a victory in July 2019 at Daytona International Speedway. Suarez earned both of his Cup Series career wins with Trackhouse and finished a career-best 10th in the standings in 2022.
“When it came down to it, it’s just a thing where I think we need each other,” Dickerson said. “I think all of us love a good story of redemption and giving people a platform to prove doubters wrong. Daniel needs to show everybody that this year was an outlier, and we want to show everybody that the 7 car’s performance this year was an outlier as well.”
Spire will be the fifth team in 10 years for the 33-year-old Suarez, who won the 2016 season championship for the second-tier Xfinity Series.
He is 28th this year in the Cup Series standings with two top-five finishes and seven top-10 finishes. He said Dickerson was one of the first calls he made when he learned he was out of a job at Trackhouse.
Dan Towriss, the CEO of TWG Motorsports, became the majority owner of Spire this year as the NASCAR team was added to a racing portfolio that also owns the Cadillac Formula 1 team launching next season as well as Andretti Global in IndyCar.
“If you look at the last three years at how Spire Motorsports has grown, I mentioned this to Jeff, three years ago, I probably wasn’t looking at Spire Motorsports as an option,” Suarez said. “Right now, I believe this is the fastest-growing team in NASCAR, and I want to be part of that. I know they’re not even close to be done. They’re just getting started.”
Spire has three Cup Series cars, with Michael McDowell (21st in points) and Carson Hocevar (23rd) both ahead of Haley but all of them outside of the playoffs this year. However, the team has three pole positions, six top-five finishes, 16 top-10 results and 233 laps led this year — all season highs for an organization that only began racing in 2019.
Freeway Insurance, an insurance broker and distributor, will be the main sponsor for Suarez in the No. 7.
Suarez will now be under the same umbrella as fellow Mexican driver Sergio Perez, who will join Valtteri Bottas as the first two drivers for Cadillac. Suarez and Perez typically have significant sponsorship behind them from Mexican entities, but Dickerson said they were not a package deal for TWG.
“There was no decree. We’re a sales-based organization right? And so it’s just like, ‘OK, if Checo is going in the F1 car, then, you know, we have an opportunity here to really tap into a passionate fan base,’ and things come together,” Dickerson said. “But you don’t know that’s how it’s going to go, right?
“We kind of dragged this out some, because we’re just kind of hoping and waiting for some spark with Justin, and you finally get to a place where you’re just like, ‘Man, I don’t know that we’re doing him any good, and I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any good.’ By that point, Checo was already announced.”
