In ‘The Long Run’ vlog, which you can watch HERE, Daniel Suarez offered additional comments regarding the on and off-track clashes with Ross Chastain last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The two drivers were teammates at Trackhouse Racing between 2022 and 2025, before Suarez and the team parted ways. Now driving for Spire Motorsports, Suarez explained the entire sequence of events that led to the post-race confrontation between himself and Chastain, laughing as he called him his ‘enemigo.’
The initial contact
First, the two drivers made contact in the opening two laps of the race, with Suarez saying in the vlog: “I feel like everything kind of started on Lap 2, actually Lap 1 and a quarter. He crowded me with the #38 [Zane Smith] and he hit me right there. It wasn’t a big deal, you know. That’s a racing deal. I never even thought about anything, I never raced him hard because of that or anything. I moved on, that’s racing. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to do that, it’s part of racing.”
The late-race pass
Much later in the race, Chastain began to run Suarez down as he struggled with the left-front tire on his #7 Chevrolet. Chastain passed him to the outside with just over two laps to go, and there was some very close racing as he went by. Chastain then appeared to give Suarez the middle finger out the window as he drove away.
“Three laps to go when I was having this issue with the left front tire, he came and he was passing me. I was trying to race him — it’s three laps to go. When he was passing me, I got loose and I crowded him. We didn’t touch, he didn’t hit the wall, nobody crashed, nobody lost a position. Everything was fine. But obviously, he was mad. Understandable, a little mad. That’s fine. He gave me the finger for a lap or half-a-lap, which I think is a little bit unnecessary. But that’s him, that’s fine.”
Cooldown lap contact
Chastain went on to finish 17th, and Suarez crossed the line in 18th. On the cooldown lap, Suarez drove alongside Chastain, and waved to him. Chastain then doored Suarez, and according to the Spire driver, Suarez was trying to apologize for the close call.
“He was just super mad,” continued Suarez, who raised some safety concerns. “He hit me on the cooldown lap, which I think is super unacceptable, because at that point, we already loose our belts and all these kind of things. Some people even open their belts completely, so that’s not good. For me, the biggest thing is afterwards…”
Drivers have been penalized for intentional cooldown lap contact before, including Bubba Wallace, who hit Alex Bowman following the Chicago Street Course race in 2024, and even Suarez himself, who bumped Chastain and Bowman as they entered the pits after a race at COTA in 2023.
Pit road confrontation
But back to Vegas this past weekend, things spilled over into a tense pit road confrontation, with Suarez approaching Chastain, who appeared to be quite agitated. They were separated after putting hands on one another, and that was essentially end of it.
“What happens on the race track happens on the race track,” said Suarez. “That’s racing, right? Everyone is going to get into it with another driver once in a while … that’s part of it. What I was actually pretty upset and disappointed is what happened afterwards.
“I have known Ross for a long time, and I have always known that him and I were very different. We’re very different kind of people. That’s okay, I will always respect him. But the kind of words that he said after the race is just completely unacceptable. That’s chicken stuff. That’s not good. I lost a lot of respect for him, as a person, because that’s just not good. It’s not a good look for him, it’s not a good look for the kind of person that he is, I think. And it was just a little bit sad, to be honest. I really wanted to — I was getting fired up to fight, but what was I going to gain? There’s nothing to gain with that. He’s not the kind of person I really want to fight. But yeah, just disappointed.”
Suarez didn’t indicate what was said besides saying that Chastain denied hitting him on the cooldown lap, and Suarez also addressed the idea that he is actively targeting Trackhouse, as he’s also had some run-ins with the other two drivers on the team early in the 2026 season.
“Listen, a lot of people think that I’m trying to target Trackhouse, and I’m not even thinking about that,” asserted Suarez.
The vlog, which began last year with the help of wife, Julia Piquet, is normally weekly, but Suarez noted that they will be picking and choosing which races to highlight in the future, with the next planned vlog centered around the Bristol race weekend.
The full video featuring Suarez’s comments can be viewed below:
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