It will be hard to miss the future of Joe Gibbs Racing this weekend.
Daniel Suarez and Erik Jones took the green flag in the Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway yesterday, while tonight, the 18-year-old Jones is to climb into the No. 18 car and make his Sprint Cup debut in place of Kyle Busch, who is still recovering from a wreck in February.
Both youngsters are driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports, but they also drive in the Xfinity Series for Joe Gibbs.
Photo: AFP
Talk about some heady stuff for a couple of college-aged kids.
“It’s crazy how young they are,” said 38-year-old Matt Crafton, who led the Truck Series standings. “When I was 18, 19 years old, thinking about what I was doing — I wanted to be here at some point, but I wasn’t thinking about being at this level that quick. It’s amazing.”
Suarez and Jones have taken far different roads to arrive in the same spotlight.
For the 23-year-old Suarez, it was growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, where most kids spend their time playing soccer. He was 11 when he started racing karts and his talent was evident so quickly that he soon graduated to NASCAR’s series in Mexico. Then it was on to some of the minor league circuits in the US before catching on with Busch’s team in the Truck Series.
Now, the dashing young man, who picked up English using Rosetta Stone and from the boys in the garage, is running in some of NASCAR’s top series for some of its strongest teams.
“I don’t feel pressure,” he said when asked about the attention that he is getting. “I felt pressure when I was 16 years old and I was looking for sponsors and I needed a sponsor to keep racing. We don’t have that problem now.”
The biggest problem Suarez has now is getting to the front.
He nearly did that in his Xfinity car a few weeks ago in Bristol, Tennessee, where he finished second to Joey Logano. Jones finished fourth in the same race.
Suarez also led five laps in the season-opening Trucks race at the Daytona circuit in Florida, led again before finishing fourth in Atlanta, Georgia, and was ninth in the race in Martinsville, Virginia.
All that time running up front is starting to make Suarez a household name in Mexico, where motorsports is a big thing, but NASCAR is only now beginning to make major inroads.
“I hope those people can come here to see us and take a chance to see what we’re doing right now, because I really feel lucky to be racing on this level,” he said. “Not just that, but you’re racing with a great organization and as well to represent my country. But at the end of the day, all we want to do is try to learn and be competitive.”
Those happen to be the same goals that Jones is bringing to Kansas Speedway.
“That’s a pretty fast progression, the way it’s worked out,” Jones said. “To have those opportunities at a young age is cool for anybody. I guess I hoped at some point I’d get my chance in the Cup Series, too, but I didn’t know it would come at 18.”
“I’m confident the car will be pretty good, but I want to make sure I’m confident in myself getting around this place in a Cup car,” he said.
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