The No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet has quite the history in the last few seasons. (Photo: Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images)
Much like the history of American stock car racing, the history of popular music exemplifies how members of past groups can come together to form something new and more sustainable.
The group ABBA formed after the dissolution of the Hep Stars and the Hootenanny Singers as Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus joined forces with former solo singers Frida Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog to create one of the highest-selling music groups of all-time.
Similarly, bands like Bad Company, The Eagles, Journey, the Highwaymen, Temple of the Dog, Foo Fighters, Velvet Revolver, and Audioslave took remnants and members of successful bands and solo acts to breathe new life into their careers, making something new out of something familiar.
After years of toiling in the midfield and at the back of the grid, the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet team appears to have found a fitting frontman for their band.
From Monterrey to Mooresville
Daniel Suárez came a long way from Monterrey, Mexico, to taking on the highest demands of stock car racing in America. (Photo: Getty Images)
2016 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion Daniel Suárez spent much of his Cup Series career searching for the right opportunity.
After bringing home that title, Joe Gibbs Racing threw the 25-year-old Mexican driver to the wolves after the sudden retirement of Cup stalwart Carl Edwards in January 2017, allowing his newly minted champion to pilot the No. 19 Arris Toyota.
Two years later, Suárez left the team and manufacturer that helped bring him to this country and made him an O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion after JGR proceeded to replace him with 2017 Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr.
Suárez served a one-year stint at Stewart-Haas Racing in the No. 41 Ford, where he missed the postseason by just four points, leading to his dismissal at season’s end for ascending O’Reilly Series star Cole Custer.
All of this came before the nadir: A nightmare 2020 campaign that saw Suárez miss the Daytona 500 and struggle to finish in the top 25 on a consistent basis.
When the light was at its dimmest for Suárez, opportunity soon knocked as Justin Marks opened up Trackhouse Racing, a brand-new, single-car outfit built up with the tattered remains of Germain Racing.
The light in Suárez flickered a few times that first season with a strong fourth-place effort in the inaugural Bristol Dirt Race, including top 10s at Nashville, Kansas and Texas.
A 25th-place points finish fails to explain what the upstart team was able to accomplish, but midway through 2021, Marks announced that he had bought out Chip Ganassi Racing’s team and a second charter for Ross Chastain, the lone CGR refugee.
Suárez’s light beamed through him in 2022 when NASCAR introduced the seventh-generation car model, the Next Gen platform.
In the Next Gen’s second points race, the Mexican racer drove through the field late amid carnage in his rearview mirror. With four laps to go, he seized the top spot from defending series champion Kyle Larson, but Larson showed his savvy by getting right back by the No. 99 Chevrolet.
Near misses at Atlanta, Bristol Dirt and most devastatingly, in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, gave Suárez the confidence he needed to convert when given his next opportunity.
Suárez dominated the latter half of the race at Sonoma, powering by Chris Buescher on a restart with 25 laps to go and pulling away to a convincing victory, the first of his Cup Series career.
The breakthrough win locked him into the playoffs (which he would have made on points in this format anyway), and if not for a power steering issue at the Charlotte Roval, he might have vaulted into the Round of 8 and truly contended for a title with Chastain. Unfortunately, he settled for 10th, his highest points finish to date.
A potential win at the Indianapolis Road Course the following year slipped through his grasp after a slow final pit stop, allowing Michael McDowell to take the victory. It was Suárez’s last opportunity to snag a playoff spot before the postseason began, calling his ride with Trackhouse into question.
This questioning grew as Trackhouse experienced success with Shane van Gisbergen at the Chicago Street Course with Project 91 and signed Craftsman Truck Series champion Zane Smith to a development contract.
At the dawn of the 2024 season, the outlook for Daniel Suárez looked to be dimming instead of brimming, but sometimes, it gets darker before you receive a rush of light.
After flexing his muscle on the reconfigured Atlanta in previous races, the No. 99 Freeway Insurance Chevrolet carved around the outside of Turn 4, steering clear of Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch beneath him to score the narrowest victory in track history at just .003 of a second.
The win bumped them into the playoffs once more, where Suárez advanced to the second round and was once again eliminated, earning a 12th-place points finish.
Despite a heartening 2024 for the Monterrey native, the 2025 season greeted him with a tremendous series of obstacles.
First was the signing of van Gisbergen to a third full-time entry with the team after a successful O’Reilly Series campaign the previous season, while Smith’s run with Trackhouse (via Spire) ended after just one ill-fated season.
In Smith’s stead stood Suárez’s newest threat to the team he helped build into a contender: 18-year-old wonderkid Connor Zilisch.
The dynamo racer from Charlotte already notched an LMP2 class victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and his first O’Reilly Series win with JR Motorsports on debut at Watkins Glen, which was essentially a teaser for his immense 2025 O’Reilly Series campaign where he collected 10 wins and finished second in points.
Suárez’s 2025 looked quite a bit different. After winning in the Mexico and Brasil Series in 2024, Suárez drove from last to first in a backup car to win the O’Reilly Series race at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, his first victory in an American-based NASCAR series on his home soil.
Unfortunately for the 33-year-old racer, that would be one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dim campaign. A win at Las Vegas early in the season slipped away late when his car bottomed out in Turn 2, ceding the lead, the victory and the playoff spot to Josh Berry.
Top 10s came with less frequency than ever before as the No. 99 team receded into being an also-ran, all while his presumptive replacement lit the world on fire as Suárez did nearly a decade ago.
As the playoffs drew near, Trackhouse decided to cement Suárez as a lame duck when they announced Zilisch would pilot a renumbered entry for the full 2026 slate in place of the No. 99, meaning the inaugural team number ended its tenure with the team at the same time as the inaugural team driver.
Suárez and the No. 99 bunch made a final push to claim a playoff spot, notching three consecutive top 10s to cap off the regular season that included a runner-up finish at the Daytona cutoff race.
With Suárez’s Cup career in jeopardy, let’s turn our attention to the No. 7 Spire team.
Corey LaJoie, Justin Haley and The Orb of Confusion
Spire’s No. 7 team has gone through change after change until hitting on something with Daniel Suárez. (Photo: Sean Gardner | Getty Images)
Spire Motorsports started out as a sports agency that represented drivers throughout NASCAR. When Furniture Row Racing shut down at the end of 2018, they put their charter up for sale, allowing Spire owner Jeff Dickerson to start a Cup Series team.
Initially, they intended to start a team because they could not sell the charter, but winning with Justin Haley in their debut season after a surprise turn of events at Daytona gave the upstart operation the confidence to build.
When Leavine Family Racing shut down after a grueling 2020 season, Spire purchased their shop and assets to expand their operation to two cars, giving Corey LaJoie the nod to take their newest entry: the No. 7 Chevrolet Camaro.
The team burst out of the gate to score a top 10 in their first points event, but it would be their only top-10 finish of the entire season as they meandered in the midpack most weeks. Other weeks, they were simply trying to get their car to the checkered flag clean as a backmarker.
Just as Daniel Suárez’s star started to shine with the implementation of the Next Gen platform, LaJoie began competing on the superspeedways, notching his first career top-five finish in the Atlanta spring race.
The series returned to the Georgia track in the summer, only three weeks after Suárez’s maiden triumph at Sonoma, with a hungry LaJoie behind the wheel, ready to become the next first-time Cup Series winner.
Late in the race, LaJoie sized up Chase Elliott, although he was never able to truly overcome the No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet. On the final lap, the No. 7 Chevrolet jumped to the outside of the No. 9 before his front end ate the outside wall, dropping him to 21st.
LaJoie cut his teeth in lesser equipment with little shot at victory. He developed a reputation for taking care of what he had and bringing it home clean.
His DNF count went up from four to six in the second year, which does not even include the Atlanta result as he limped to the checkers.
This changed in Year 3 as he moved from outside the top 30 and firmly into the top 25 in points on the back of a season, where he was deemed running at the finish of every race.
The 2023 season turned out to be a career year for the 31-year-old journeyman, collecting a pair of fourth-place finishes at Atlanta and Talladega, as well as a top-10 showing in the Daytona regular-season finale.
Despite all of this momentum, LaJoie found himself unable to sustain it the following year, when he scored top 10s in both the Daytona 500 and the Southern 500, but his season became more notable for high-profile errors.
Racing Noah Gragson unnecessarily hard at Michigan generated contact that sent the No. 7 Chevrolet taking to the sky and barrel-rolling down the backstretch.
Prior to that, Kyle Busch took to the Pat McAfee Show to air his grievances against LaJoie after the No. 7 Chevrolet cleaned out Busch’s No. 8 Chevrolet heading into Turn 1 at Pocono in an absolutely dangerous maneuver.
The DNFs returned, rising back to three, and his reputation in the fanbase and in the sport seemed to be waning. If that was not bad enough, LaJoie often used his podcast “Stacking Pennies” to criticize the race teams that employed him in an effort to boost his profile, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many.
As the season wound down, chatter in and around the sport spread quickly about Lajoie’s impending divorce from the team he helped build just a few years ago. Hendrick Motorsports signed Justin Haley to take the No. 7 Chevrolet for 2025, which ultimately got handed to him sooner than expected.
Lajoie and the No. 7 team missed the playoffs again and were sitting 30th in points when he was effectively traded to Rick Ware Racing for Haley to finish out the final seven races of the 2024 schedule.
It was a humble beginning, and an even humbler ending for Spire and Lajoie.
The next chapter would be written by Haley, picking up where he left off after a few part-time seasons with the No. 77 team that yielded their first victory at Daytona five years ago.
Haley’s chapter can be described as more tumultuous but shorter than Lajoie’s.
The young Hoosier put forth a promising 2024 campaign with RWR, but when Rick Hendrick gives you a call, you will certainly listen to what he has to say.
A top-10 finish at Talladega and a solid run at Las Vegas inspired hope for more with a full season to work with, especially considering they recruited championship-winning crew chief Rodney Childers from the defunct Stewart-Haas Racing.
The No. 7 Chevrolet showed up to Bristol with speed but was unable to capitalize with a better result than 17th, and stunningly, Spire cut Childers loose before the Talladega spring race due to a perceived lack of communication and collaboration between driver and crew chief.
Ryan Sparks returned to the top of the pit box of the No. 7 team once more while also serving as the company’s Competition Director, but the results continued to plummet.
Haley started the year with five top 20s and one top 10 in the first nine races with Childers; following that departure, he had just five more top-20 finishes and no additional top 10s in the next 16 events, leaving him 31st in points and needing another miracle at Daytona.
Lightning nearly struck twice as the No. 7 Gainbridge Chevrolet powered to the front late in the going, leading the field to the white flag before being passed by Cole Custer, Ryan Blaney and eventually, Suárez.
Talks exploded after that week about Spire possibly looking to move on from the 26-year-old driver. Despite his seat being hotter than ever, Haley mustered just four top 20s in the final 10 races, all while his team announced that Suárez would be replacing him on Oct. 22.
Haley moved back into the fold at Kaulig Racing to help launch their new Ram program in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he is currently a teammate of fellow Spire castoff, Corey LaJoie.
Chasing New Beginnings
Daniel Suárez already clinched a spot in The Chase before Saturday night’s regular-season finale at Daytona. (Photo: Krista Jasso | Getty Images)
With both sides looking for a fresh start, Ryan Sparks handed Competition Director duties to veteran crew chief Matt McCall, allowing him more time to gel and strategize with his new driver.
Not only that, Daniel Suárez came into this No. 7 team as the most experienced and most accomplished driver to walk through their doors.
Four O’Reilly Series wins and a championship, a Truck Series win, two Cup Series wins and a top-10 points finish gave Suárez’s resume significant bulk where his predecessors lacked.
Not only that, Suárez elevated all of his race teams after Stewart-Haas Racing, where he was hardly given a chance to find his footing with the team before he was tossed. He spoke extensively in “NASCAR: Full Speed” about how he turned Gaunt Brothers Racing into a legitimate outfit before his departure for Trackhouse Racing.
Suárez’s streak of building continued by bringing musician Pitbull into the Trackhouse fold and establishing a culture with the team in its infancy that allowed it to blossom into a title contender with more funding.
These two factors, along with Carson Hocevar’s continued development, gave the No. 7 Spire Motorsports team its best team to date on paper and equipment coming into the 2026 season.
Suárez scored stage points in his Duel race and in both stages of the Daytona 500 en route to a 13th-place result before returning to form at Atlanta by earning a top-five finish.
Poor strategy at COTA and a crash completely out of his control at Phoenix knocked them out of The Chase, while a modest 18th-place finish at Las Vegas was far from boring after a post-race altercation between Suárez and former Trackhouse teammate Ross Chastain after on-track contact.
While it was not apparent then, the Las Vegas finish in March kicked off a streak of 13 consecutive top-20 finishes across a variety of facilities before ending with a flat tire at Sonoma at the end of June.
Some highlights in that stretch were a seventh at Darlington, a gritty performance at Bristol, where he stayed on the lead lap to come home 12th, an abrupt turnaround in performance at Texas that ended with a sixth-place finish and a stellar performance at Michigan on two tires, where he held on for sixth.
The crowning achievement of the No. 7 Spire team’s season, though, was the Coca-Cola 600.
A loose wheel spoiled Suárez’s early momentum, forcing him into the pits for an unscheduled stop that put him a lap down, but it would not be long before a Connor Zilisch accident got him back on the lead lap.
Fresh rubber and timely cautions kept the No. 7 Chevrolet in the mix, fully bouncing back into the top 10 after the 100-lap mark. It would not last as a vibration after the next round of green-flag stops put them a lap down once again.
All of the third stage was spent regaining their pace, and by the time the final stage went green, weather began to lurk on the radar, causing the drivers to lose their minds. Just as he had a chance to get back on the lead lap, he had to successfully avoid the crash that gave him the opportunity.
Weather threatened to halt the event, but the field pitted, giving Ryan Sparks a chance to step up and give his driver a chance to win one of the sport’s biggest crown-jewel races.
Saddled with two fresh right-side tires while much of his competition were fitted with four fresh tires, Daniel Suárez needed to run the best laps of his life to hold on to the lead.
And that is exactly what he did.
Two great shoves from Kyle Larson on the final restarts gave Suárez just enough space to control his own destiny and hold off a hungry pack of drivers to make it to the red flag first that ultimately ended the race.
The victory proved emotional due to the recent loss of Kyle Busch, a mentor of Suárez’s and Dickerson’s career-long friend. To make matters more fitting, Spire purchased Kyle Busch Motorsports and its building after the 2023 season.
After the disappointment at Sonoma, the No. 7 Spire team stabilized to some extent, logging five more top-20 finishes and solid stage points to keep themselves in the points battle long enough to lock themselves into The Chase before the regular-season finale on Saturday night at Daytona.
It remains to be seen what Spire can and ultimately will accomplish in The Chase, as this is uncharted territory for Spire and all of its drivers. The careers of each driver either began or significantly picked up in the playoff era.
That said, let’s take a peek at the raw numbers — One win, two top fives, six top 10s, 13 top 15s, 20 top 20s, one DNF, a 99% lap completion rate, one stage win and 74 stage points.
While it is a remote possibility for this No. 7 Spire team to truly compete for a title this year, Suárez wheeled this car into the postseason and hopes to continue capitalizing when his opponents stumble, as he has all year.