Denny Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have weighed in on the tension between former teammates Daniel Suarez and Ross Chastain after a heated post-race confrontation in Las Vegas.
Chastain walked up to Suarez, who made light contact with Trackhouse Racing‘s No. 1 Chevy in Sunday’s race while battling in the mid-pack on pit road, and gave him a shove after a brief exchange of words. But the on-track contact between the two looked minor, which led Hamlin to suggest that there must be more going on between them behind the scenes.
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During the latest episode of his Actions Deterimental podcast, Hamlin said:
“I didn’t see anything on track that warrants why these guys got face to face after the race. That’s why I think there’s something more.” (37:55)
Daniel Suarez also had a run-in with Trackhouse rookie Connor Zilisch at Circuit of the Americas, but Dale Jr. rejected that Chastain would be fighting the No. 88 battles and came to the same conclusion as Hamlin. He said in the latest episode of The Dale Download (7:35):
“I didn’t see anything on the racetrack that would. … There seems to be some bad blood between the two drivers that exists from the past. … These guys were teammates last year. And years before that. So there’s got to be something that has been brewing between them since years ago as teammates.”
On the cool-down lap at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Chastain made contact with Suarez’s car in traffic. Suarez responded by dooring Chastain and later called him “two-faced” and said that their relationship has “always been very weird.”
Daniel Suarez’s strained relationship with former Trackhouse teammate continues into 2026 with a new team
Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez have also had a string of on-track run-ins that stretch long before Las Vegas. In 2023, during a late restart at COTA, Chastain bumped another car into Suarez, ruining his race. Suarez responded with contact on the cooldown lap and later confronted both drivers on pit road, which led to a $50,000 fine.
The tension resurfaced again in 2025 at Sonoma Raceway. Chastain misjudged a corner and spun Suarez, dropping him from 14th to outside the top 25.
Ahead of the Vegas race, Daniel Suarez commented on his exceeded expectations with Spire Motorsports, which he joined after leaving Trackhouse Racing at the end of the 2025 season, and said that he was impressed with his new team:
“I had some expectations back in October, November about this place and I’m not kidding when I’m saying that this place has exceeded some of my expectations competition wise.”
The 34-year-old suggested he had no hard feelings after leaving Trackhouse and added that the team could improve a lot in the near future.
Edited by Hitesh Nigam