"It kinda stings that we're not in Victory Lane": Daniel Suarez reacts to his runners up finish at Atlanta playoff race

Daniel Suarez had to settle for second place in Sunday afternoon's NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The Mexican driver came up short to Joey Logano, whose win guaranteed him a spot in the next round.

Suarez, the winner at Atlanta in February, expressed his disappointment on pit road post-race after failing to complete the year sweep at the 1.5-mile track and advance in the playoffs.

“It kinda stings that we’re not in Victory Lane,” Suárez said via NASCAR.com. "That’s racing, we have to continue to work, but it’s good starting out in the playoffs. Honestly, right now I don’t care about the points. It just hurts that we’re not in Victory Lane.”

What ended up being the final restart of Sunday's race saw Logano, driver of the No. 22 Team Penske car, lined up alongside Penske teammate Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 99 Trackhouse car Suarez, and the latter's Trackhouse teammate Ross Chastain.

On the next-to-last lap of the race, the No. 1 Trackhouse Chevrolet fell out of contention which left Suarez with no drafting help and forced him to run second to the eventual winner.

“I can’t thank the No. 1 team enough,” Suárez said. “He pushed me very, very good on the restart, all the way through Turns 1 and 2 and through Turns 3 and 4. He kept me in position; we were right there in the fight with the second push. After the second push, I don’t know if he got a flat tire or what, I don’t know what happened exactly but once I lost him, I knew that it was game over because that was my dancing partner.”

As Matt Swiderski, Suarez's crew chief, pushed their car back to the garage area following the race, he told NASCAR.com that the No. 99 team was still pleased to leave the first race of the playoffs with a solid finish despite not coming away with the win.

“We had a good car,” Swiderski said. “I got us a little crossed up on pit road getting into (Logano), so the team did a good job at getting back up front and getting it fixed. Really, we just had to look for big picture as bad as we wanted to win it, we will still take this."

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Suarez heads into Watkins Glen above the Round of 12 cutline

Prior to Atlanta, the two-time Cup race winner held a mere one point advantage over 13th place in the standings, which is the first spot out of the Round of 12. Now, the runner-up finish at Atlanta has helped push Suarez up by 22 points over the cutline with two races remaining in the Round of 12.

Swiderski told NASCAR.com that they're feeling confident heading into next week's road course event at The Glen.

“I think we feel really good about Watkins Glen. That is a place that we can go to and have a really strong day and hopefully build a little bit of a gap going into Bristol. That can go either way; you could be wrecked out early there. So, if we could just build a little cushion there, we would feel a lot better about it.”