Last week, Spire Motorsports announced that Justin Haley would not be returning to the number seven car next season.

Today, Spire announced that Daniel Suarez would be driving the number seven Spire Motorsports car next season.

Trackhouse Racing announced on July 1 that Suarez would be leaving the team and the number 99 car after the end of the season.  There has been a great deal of speculation over the past few months as to where Suarez would land next season; especially in light of the so few open opportunities next year.

Spire Motorsports is owned by Jeff Dickerson and Dan Towriss

Suarez spent five years at Trackhouse and in that time has won two Cup Series races to become the first Mexican born driver to win a race in the Cup Series.

Suarez spoke on his new ride saying, “to me, to be quite honest with you, it was a no-brainer.  How Spire Motorsports has grown the last three years — I mentioned this to Jeff — three years ago, I probably wasn’t looking at Spire Motorsports as an option. Right now, I believe that this is the fastest-growing team in NASCAR, and I want to be part of that. I know that they are not even close to being done. They’re just getting started.”

Xfinity Series 10 time winner and Sunoco Rookie of the Year Connor Zilisch will be moving up from JR Motorsports to take over driving the number 99 car.

Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson spoke on signing Suarez saying, “it’s just the thing where I think we need each other.  I think all of us love a good story of redemption and giving people a platform to prove doubters wrong. And so I think in this case, Daniel needs to show everybody that this year was an outlier, and we want to show everybody that the seven car’s performance this year was an outlier as well.”

Suarez added, “this year, it was not the way that I really wanted it to go with my team, and the same thing with the seven.  So I believe that we both have some things that we want to get back in place, and we’re hungry to do that.”

Suarez will be joining Michael McDowell and Carson Hocevar at Spire Motorsports.

Dickerson noted, “I think desperation is a big thing.  He doesn’t want to be in this situation again next year. I don’t want to be in this situation, you know? I mean, I feel like we’re … changing driver to driver to driver here. But I really just think if he can just be himself, just be steady, he’s capable of winning races and running in the top five.”

He added, “and I think that’s really just our next step is just consistently being there. We’re obviously there. It’s just, can we consistently get all three cars in that mix, and maybe not just one or some weeks two?”

Since winning the Xfinity Series championship in 2016, Suarez moved up to the Cup Series where he has driven for Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing, Gaunt Brothers Racing, and Trackhouse Racing.

There have been just a handful of drivers and crew making it to the Silly Season list this season.

Besides Daniel Suarez release from Trackhouse and signing with Spire Motorsports…

In the Xfinity Series – soon to be the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, JR Motorsports driver Connor Zilisch will be moving up to the Cup Series where he will take over the driving duties in the Trackhouse Racing number 99 car.

Now that he has his 60 wins, there has been some speculation of whether Denny Hamlin will continue to driver.  Earlier this year the 44 year old driver has signed a multi-year extension with Joe Gibbs Racing.

Driver of the Hendricks Motorsports number 24, William Byron has signed a four-year contract extension with HMS.

New Zealand driver Shane van Gisbergen has also signed a multi-year contract extension and will remain with Trackhouse Racing.  He and Trackhouse teammate Ross Chastain have also signed a deal with JR Motorsports to drive a partial schedule in the number nine car.

Harrison Burton will be parting ways with AM Racing at the end of the season.  Burton has not announced any plans for the future nor has AMR announced a replacement driver for the number 25 car.

With a carousel of driver moves over at JR Motorsports; Dale Jr is a assured that the driver for the number eight car – Sammy Smith – will be remaining with the team.

After the announcement that Ram Trucks would be returning to NASCAR, Kaulig Racing announced that they would be fielding all five of the Ram entries for 2026.  Kaulig has just named the first driver in the series with Brenden Queen.

After joining the Craftsman Truck Series at its infancy, 49 year old three time champion Matt Crafton has announced that it is time to hang up the helmet as a full time driver.  He has not ruled out some part time racing events.

With Crafton vacating the ThorSport number 88 truck, teammate Ty Majeski will take over for Crafton.

ThorSport has not named the new driver for the 98 truck currently driven by Majeski.

JR Motorsports has announced that Carson Kvapil and Connor Zilisch will be sharing the driving duties in the number one car.
Sammy Smith will remain in the number eight car
and Ross Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen will drive some races in the number nine car.
There is still no announcement for a driver of the 88 car or whether there will be any more drivers in the nine car.

ThorSport has yet to name a driver for the 98 truck.

Kaulig Racing still needs to name four more Ram Truck drivers and crew chiefs for those drivers.