Now, a year later, Suarez has settled into his role as driver of the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.
“I feel like my rookie season was OK,” Suarez said Wednesday during the final day of the NASCAR Media Tour. “I felt like in the beginning of the season, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what to expect.
“Then we started having changes and adjustments to the team and things out of our control, and that never really helps in the beginning,” Suarez continued. “I felt like later on in the year, we kept having things to change and stuff that didn’t help us. But at the end of the day, I felt like that helped us a lot to learn and to (build) the right team for this year and to put the right group of people (together) for this year.”
Suarez’s rookie season in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wasn’t the smoothest of transitions. The 2016 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion struggled for consistency, earning only one top-five finish and a dozen top-10 results.
That led to a lot of changes by Joe Gibbs Racing on Suarez’s No. 19 team. Prior to the end of last season, the team replaced the top two engineers on Suarez’s car and during the offseason JGR appointed a new car chief to help oversee the team.
“Everything that we had last year was just for last year for many, many different reasons, and I feel like now having all the people together, all the people that we know are going to be together the entire year or even more than that, that’s — that just gives you more confidence and more — puts you in a more comfortable spot to know that you are going to have the commitment of everyone, and everyone is super excited to be working together,” Suarez said.
Suarez believes this year will be different in a lot of ways. His hope is that the team will stay together throughout the entire season, unlike last year when he had to change crew chiefs just a few races into the season when Dave Rogers took an indefinite leave of absence and was replaced by Scott Graves.
That was just one of several changes Suarez said the team had to go through. He believes sticking with the same group this year will lead to better results on the track.
“Last year at this point we had everything together already, but as we went into the season, a lot of things changed, crew chief, car chief, engineers, a lot of things changed, and I felt like that was the reason of having everything a rush in the beginning,” Suarez said. “But that’s not the rookie season that everyone wants, but sometimes that’s what makes you tougher, and I feel like that teach me a lot of things last year to prepare myself better for this year, and I feel like we are going to show that on the race track.”
Source :speedsport.com
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