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FONTANA, Calif. — Daniel Suarez was less than two miles from what would have been his first victory in NASCAR’s XFINITY Series when his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota began running out of fuel.
At that point it no longer mattered that teammate Kyle Busch, once again dominant, had cut a left front tire on the white-flag lap, yielding the lead to Suarez as the two raced through Turn 2 Saturday at Auto Club Speedway. The only thing that mattered was getting back to the finish line before anyone could overtake him.
But Suarez, the series points leader, dropped to the inside on the backstretch, trying to urge his car around one final time.
Incredibly, Busch sped back past Suarez on three good tires and one not-so-good one.
But even Busch couldn’t hold off a hard-charging Austin Dillon, who shot around Suarez, went outside of Busch, clipped the wall and made slight contact with Busch as a result before streaking across the finish line for the win.
“In the whole run we were saving fuel,” Suarez, who nursed his car back to the line for a fourth-place finish, said. “I knew that we were one to one-and-a-half laps short. I was saving fuel. I wasn’t worrying about the 20 (Erik Jones) or 18 (Busch); I was just trying to finish the race because I knew that we were short.”
Jones, one of three JGR drivers that ran in the top three nearly all day, began to run out of fuel with three laps remaining. Suarez knew he had more fuel than his teammate, he said, “but not a lot.”
“I passed the 18 when he blew the left front tire in (Turns) 1 and 2 and on the exit of 2 I ran out of fuel and on the exit of 4, the 2 (Austin Dillon) and the 18 passed me back. Very unfortunate but it’s part of racing. I really think that our first victory is coming and hopefully we can get it very soon.”
Suarez, 24, has finished no worse than eighth this year; he’s been second, third and fourth in his last three outings and now leads Elliott Sadler by 10 in the points standings.
As disappointing as the near-miss was, Suarez said there was a bright side.
“We have a really fast race car and won the pole,” he said. “I think it’s been the closest race that I ever had and would have loved to get that first victory.”
Busch led 133 of the race’s 150 laps. Suarez led once for four laps, as the race got underway.
“It’s not bad,” he said. “The team is amazing with the chemistry that we have. We win and we lose together and today we were close and that’s pretty much all I can say. I can tell you our first victory is coming, and it’s coming fast.”