“I smelt carnitas”: Daniel Suarez looks back on his fireball moment at Daytona 

Daniel Suarez's race came to an abrupt end when his car burst into flames. Reflecting on the incident, the Mexican driver said that he initially didn’t want to leave the car because he thought the situation was manageable — until he pulled into his pit and caught a whiff of what smelled like 'carnitas'.

The mishap occurred during the evening's first pit stop when the #99 pit crew spilled a bit of fuel. The small spill was ignited by a backfire as Denny Hamlin's car, in the stall behind Suarez, backfired while he was trying to exit his pit.

Hamlin’s toggling between brake and throttle sent flames shooting out, which set the fuel in Suarez’s stall ablaze. Sharing the ordeal on X, Suarez wrote:

"I really didn’t want to get out of the car. …. I didn’t think the fire was that bad until I stopped in my box, and I smelt carnitas. 😅🥩"

As Suarez chooses to drive using only a rear-facing camera instead of a traditional rearview mirror, he couldn't see the fire as he completed a lap around the track, but he felt the heat.

Sharing the same in his post-race interview with NBC Sports, the #99 Trackhouse Racing driver explained:

"I only run a rearview camera, and the camera is mounted on the rear bumper. I can feel the heat on my back, but I can’t see it. I was trying to go fast to calm down the fire, but by the time I got here (Suárez points to the entry of pit row), I could feel a lot of heat."

The Trackhouse Racing driver Daniel Suarez finished P40 after starting P22, following an eighth-placed showing last week at Michigan.

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What can we expect from Daniel Suarez in the final race of the regular season?

The upcoming final race of the regular season at Darlington promises to be a wild one as drivers scramble for their final shot at playoff spots. Although Daniel Suarez clinched a dramatic photo-finish win earlier this season at Atlanta, his odds of victory at Darlington are as solid as anybody else.

Looking at his track record, the #99 Trackhouse Racing driver has an average finish of 23.9 across 13 starts at Darlington. His standout performance was in May 2022 when he surged from a P20 start to finish P10.

Currently, the sole Mexican-American in the field, Daniel Suarez made history in 2016 as the first foreign-born driver to win a major NASCAR National Series championship by taking the NASCAR Xfinity Series crown.

Having won a race in the Brazil Series at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, Trackhouse Racing's Daniel Suarez is gearing up to nab another win in the regular season to bolster his playoff standings.

Daniel Suarez sits in 17th place in the drivers' standings with 527 points, lagging 296 points behind leader Tyler Reddick.