Suarez makes historical mark for himself and NASCAR
CHARLOTTE, N.C. » Bubba Wallace is the face of NASCAR diversity. Daniel Suarez plays an equally important role.
His road to NASCAR first stopped in upstate New York in the dead of winter. His English was limited and most of Suarez’s racing had been at lower levels in Mexico. But a K&N
Pro Series team owner had offered to mentor him, so here Suarez was in Buffalo. In January.
He was back home in Mexico in a matter of months.
Suarez returned to the United States the next year only this time he headed directly to North Carolina, the hub of NASCAR. His English was still a struggle, but the Nicolas Cage movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” with subtitles helped him with both the language and American culture.
Roughly nine years after he left Mexico determined to make it racing stock cars in America, Suarez last weekend became the first Mexican in the Fox Sports broadcast booth for a national NASCAR race. To signify the occasion, Suarez called a lap in Spanish — a well-meaning crossover cut short by an untimely caution.
“Tenemos una bandera amarilla!” Suarez called. “Caution is out, amigos.”
This was a historic moment for NASCAR, which since its 1948 founding has struggled to add diversity. NASCAR was born from a need to organize the auto racing boon fermented by bootleggers and World War II mechanics who returned home with the skills to build race cars.
NASCAR participation was almost unanimously white men and outsiders were rare. Elias Bowie in 1955 was the first of just eight Black drivers to race at NASCAR’s top level; Sara Christian ran in the 1949 Cup debut and remains one of only 16 women to compete at NASCAR’s top level.
An official diversity and development program didn’t launch until 2004 and its success is sporadic. Only four top names have made it to the Cup Series: Aric Almirola is American-born but of Cuban descent, Kyle Larson is JapaneseAmerican, Wallace is the only Black driver racing full-time in NASCAR and Suarez is the only Hispanic national champion in NASCAR history.
Suarez has had a weird ride. He was groomed in Toyota’s development system and was carving out a career at Joe Gibbs Racing, where he won the Xfinity Series championship in 2016.
He’s now with his fourth team in four years and that rocky road makes Suarez something of an afterthought.
Wallace this past year became both a prominent figure in the nation’s racial reckoning and the face of NASCAR’s ef
forts at diversity. Suarez champions the NASCAR system that got him to the Cup Series but isn’t often showcased as a diversity program success.
And yet the driver who barely spoke English when he moved to Charlotte in
2012 nine years later was at Phoenix Raceway as part of a national broadcast in the language he learned partly from watching action films. Fox Sports had planned to use Suarez for the first time last season in its popular “DriverOnly” annual production but it was canceled in the pandemic.
Suarez is expected to be part of the 2021 driver-only team but
Fox Sports accelerated his network debut last weekend by giving him a coveted slot in the booth.
His time with the microphone came as Suarez attempts a major reset on his career. JGR and Stewart-Haas Racing both pushed him out of the seat for other drivers and Suarez spent last year driving for a back-marker startup team that failed to qualify for the Daytona 500.
This year brought a fresh opportunity with Justin Marks, a former driver who has transitioned into a team owner. Trackhouse Racing aims to make “a positive impact on and off the track” while “solving the most important equation - turning negative to positive.”
Marks brought on entertainer Pitbull as part owner, which makes Suarez and Pitbull the only Hispanic driver-owner combination in NASCAR. This year Michael Jordan joined 23XI Racing to combo with Wallace in the only Black driver-owner pairing.
Pitbull uses the NASCAR platform to promote his “One race, one race only, the human race” platform and partnering with Suarez broadens the reach to a demographic NASCAR covets. There are not reliable current statistics showing what percentage of NASCAR fans are Hispanic, but NASCAR has tried to expand into Latin America and Suarez graduated from those efforts.
He remains to this day committed to the journey he began in
2012 when he recognized, “I’m the only Mexican, the only Latino in NASCAR, the only guy that can speak Spanish. If I don’t try to do something to bring Latinos to the racetrack, who is going to do it?”
He’s established a fan club called “Daniel’s Amigos” for his Hispanic fans to unite and understands that on-track performance is critical to his mission. The team has had a rough start through its first five races — Suarez was one of 16 cars crashed out of the Daytona 500 on the 13th lap — and his highest finish so far was 15th at Las Vegas.
Archie Miller’s $10.3 million buyout was one of college basketball’s priciest.
Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson decided keeping Miller would prove even more costly.
Dolson fired Miller on Monday, armed with enough cash from private donations to cover the buyout and ready to answer a fan base angered by four straight mediocre seasons.
“It’s a results-oriented business and I didn’t feel like we had made enough progress,” Dolson said on a late afternoon Zoom call. “I thought we needed a new voice and a new direction.”
The Hoosiers were already headed in the wrong direction before Miller arrived in March 2017 and four years later, the groans only grew louder.
Indiana hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2016, hasn’t reached a Final Four since 2002 and hasn’t won a national championship since 1987 — the longest drought in school history. It has won just three Big Ten titles since 1993 and now has five consecutive nonwinning seasons in Big Ten play for the first time since 1911-19.
Miller was 67-58 with the Hoosiers. He never made the NCAA Tournament during his time at the school though many believed Indiana would have received a bid last year had the tourney not been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There were other problems, too.
Miller never beat rival Purdue, going 0-7. The Boilermakers have now matched their second-longest winning streak in series history at nine. Those numbers put Miller in historically bad territory and were of great concern to Dolson, fans and alumni.
Dolson said he made his recommendation to school president Michael McRobbie over the weekend. McRobbie accepted the recommendation and then gave Dolson permission to find private money to cover the costs. Two meetings later, he also had the money to make it a more palatable decision amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has led to millions in lost revenue, reduced paychecks for coaches and administrators, and department-wide furloughs.
By making the decision before April 2022, Indiana was on the hook for the $10.3 million. If Dolson had waited another year, the cost would have dropped to $3.5 million.
“Prior to my conclusion, I had zero conversations with any donors as far as where we are as a program,” he said. “I didn’t take their temperature at all. I felt I had to do all of my due diligence first. Of course you hear things out there, but that had absolutely zero to do with my decision.”
Miller successfully recruited some of the state’s best talent, including three straight Indiana Mr. Basketball Award winners — Romeo Langford, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Anthony Leal.